-^^—^  n_n 


tihvary  of  Che  Cheolojical  ^eminarjp 

PRINCETON  •  NEW  JERSEY 

PURCHASED  BY  THE 
HAMILL  MISSIONARY  FUND 


ASPECTS  OF  ISLAM 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK  •    BOSTON  •   CHICAGO 
SAN   FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON   •    BOMBAY   •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


ASPECTS  OF  ISLAM 


BY 


Duncan  Black  Macdonald,  m.a.,  d.d. 


:♦' 


s5w 


OF  f 


Sometime  Scholar  and  Fellow  of  the  University  of  Glasgow; 

Professor  of  Semitic  Languages  in  Hartford  Theological 

Seminary  ;    Author  of  Development  of  Muslim 

Theology,   Jurisprudence   and   Constitu-  /\^ 

tional  Theory;  The  Religious  Attitude 

and  Life  in  Islam,   etc.  I*        JUN     7 


'^s, 


%/CJlL 


"The  paradox,  in  truth,  of  the  missionary's  life  is  that  he 
must  have  a  liking  for  his  people  and  their  queerest 
little  ways  even  while  he  is  trying  to  change  them.'* 

P.  359. 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1911 

All  rights  rtttrvtd 


Copyright,  1911, 
By  the  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  April,  1911. 


Nnrfajooli  ^rtsg : 
Berwick  &  Smith  Co.,  Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


TO  THE  DEAR  AND  HONORED   MEMORY  OF 

Daniel  9@met  Koger0 

MISSIONARY  OF  CHRIST  IN  ASIA  MINOR, 
WHO   WAS    KILLED    AT    ADANA   ON 
APRIL   15TH,  1909,  WHILE  MIN- 
ISTERING   MERCY    AND 
PEACE,  THESE  PAGES 
ARE  DEDICATED 


PREFACE 

The  present  volume  contains  the  Hartford- 
Lamson  Lectures  for  1909.  To  the  eight  lectures 
actually  delivered  in  accordance  with  the  require- 
ments of  that  foundation  two  have  here  been 
added,  the  present  eighth  and  ninth,  in  order 
somewhat  to  round  out  these  aspects  of  Islam 
and  to  make  them  a  more  complete  introduction 
for  the  young  missionary  to  his  new  and  strange 
world.  For  this  is  a  book  for  beginners  rather 
than  scholars;  it  deals  in  broad  outlines  and 
statements  and  not  in  details  and  qualifications. 
Yet  I  would  not  suggest  that  I  have  made  asser- 
tions more  sweeping  than  can  be  defended. 
Nothing  is  set  down  in  these  pages  that  I  am  not 
prepared  to  maintain  with  proof  at  length,  al- 
though I  am  well  aware  that  there  are  some 
statements  here  which  some  Arabists  will  regard 
dubiously.  I  would  entreat  such  to  believe  that 
they  are  not  due  to  careless  rhetoric  but  have 
sprung  from  long  consideration  and  express  set- 
tled convictions.     It  has  seemed  best  also  to  re- 

■  • 

Vll 


Vlll  PREFACE 

tain  the  somewhat  colloquial  tone  due  in  the  first 
instance  to  delivery  before  an  intimate  audience 
and  in  a  small  room. 

If  any  stray  student  of  Romance  runs  through 
these  pages  and  comes  across  my  reference  to  the 
author  of  Aiicassin  et  Nicolete  in  the  eighth  lec- 
ture, I  trust  that  he  will  not  think  that  I  have 
too  lightly  essayed  to  settle  a  serious  problem  in 
a  field  not  my  own.  The  fact  is  that  there  is  a 
class  of  popular  Arabic  romances  which  exhibit 
exactly  the  movement  of  the  cante-fable,  the 
story  being  told  in  alternate  sections  of  prose  and 
verse  and  in  such  a  way  that  these,  to  a  consider- 
able extent,  cover  the  same  matter.  Of  this  the 
Romance  of  Bihars,  lately  printed  in  full  at 
Cairo,  is  a  good  example.  I  hope  to  deal  with! 
this  subject  at  greater  length  elsewhere. 

Again  it  is  a  pleasant  duty  to  thank  my  col- 
league Professor  Gillett  for  much  generous 
assistance  both  in  talking  over  points  in  meta- 
physics and  in  reading  the  whole  book  in  MS. 

In  my  wife's  debt  I  am  more  deeply  than  ever 
before  for,  in  truth,  her  assistance  in  this  book 
has  fallen  little  short  of  formal  collaboration. 
The  personal  experiences  in  the  East  of  which  I 


PREFACE  IX 

have  made  use  were  in  great  part  hers  as  well  as 
mine,  and  in  describing  them  a  plural  pronoun 
might  often  more  fitly  have  been  employed.  We 
have  discussed,  too,  these  experiences  and  the 
situations  which  we  observed  to  such  an  extent 
that  it  is  impossible  now,  even  if  we  desired  so 
to  do,  to  separate  out  the  ideas  and  explanations 
which  we  have  each  contributed.  I  can  now 
only  take  the  general  responsibility  and  acknow- 
ledge a  large  indebtedness. 

DUNCAN  B.  MACDONALD 

Hartford,  Conn.,  U.  S.  A 
October,  1910 


NOTE 

The  Hartford-Lamson  Lectures  on  *The 
Religions  of  the  World"  are  delivered  at  Hart- 
ford Theological  Seminary  in  connection  with 
the  Lamson  Fund,  which  was  established  by  a 
group  of  friends  in  honour  of  the  late  Charles 
M.  Lamson,  D.  D.,  sometime  President  of  the 
American  Board  of  Commissioners  for  Foreign 
Missions,  to  assist  in  preparing  students  for 
the  foreign  missionary  field.  The  Lectures  are 
designed  primarily  to  give  to  such  students  a 
good  knowledge  of  the  religious  history,  beliefs 
and  customs  of  the  peoples  among  whom  they 
expect  to  labour.  As  they  are  delivered  by 
scholars  of  the  first  rank,  who  are  authorities 
in  their  respective  fields,  it  is  expected  that  in 
published  form  they  will  prove  to  be  of  value 
to  students  generally. 


XI 


CONTENTS 

Page 

Introduction    i 

Lecture         I. 

The  Muslim  East  as  it  presents  itself i6 

Lecture       IL 

The  Person  and  Life  of  Muhammad 46 

Lecture     IIL 

The    Qur'an;    the    present    Muslim    attitude 

towards  Muhammad 77 

Lecture      IV. 

Muslim  Theology  and  Metaphysics 115 

Lecture        V. 

The  Mystical  Life  and  the  Darwish  Fraternities  145 
Lecture      VI. 

The  Mystical  Life  and  the  Darwish  Fraterni- 
ties continued 176 

Lecture    VII. 

The  Attitude  of  Islam  to  the  Scriptures  and 

to  the  Person  of  Christ 210 

Lecture  VIII. 

The  Missionary  Activity  of  Muslims 250 

Lecture      IX. 

Muslim  Ideas  on  Education 288 

Lecture        X. 

The    Inner    Side    of    Muslim    Life — Popular 

Literature — a  Missionary's  Reading 323 

Index 363 

xiii 


V 

THE  HARTFORD-LAMSON  LECTURES 

ON   COMPARATIVE  RELIGION 

ASPECTS  OF  ISLAM 


INTRODUCTION 

In  the  following  lectures  I  have  endeavored 
to  avoid  direct  suggestion  as  to  the  training  and 
methods  of  the  missionary  to  Muslims,  except  in 
such  broad  and  humane  aspects  as  sympathy, 
courtesy  and  patience.  Let  him  combine  these 
with  the  fullest  knowledge  possible  to  him  and 
he  cannot  go  far  astray.  On  the  side  of  training, 
the  foundations  must,  ever  be  broad,  unbiassed 
and  uncontroversial  knowledge,  and,  on  the  side 
of  methods,  nothing  can  take  the  place  of  instinct 
and  experience. 

But  it  is  true  also  that  some  details  on  training, 
whatever  their  value,  and  some  ideas  as  to 
methods,  whatever  their  validity,  may  legitimately 
be  expected  from  the  writer  of  one  of  the  hand- 
books in  this  series.  With  diffidence,  then,  but 
frankness,  I  put  in  this  introduction  what  has 
come  to  me  on  a  vast  and  tangled  question. 

The  peculiar  characteristic  of  the  Muslim 
field,  and,  in  consequence,  the  ruling  considera- 
tion in  the  training  of  missionaries  for  it,  is  that 
I  I 


ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 


we  have  to  consider  Muslims  as  being  very  near 
to  ourselves  in  point  of  theology.  What  is 
needed,  therefore,  is  a  power  of  fine  discrimina- 
tion, combined  with  sympathy  and  an  apprecia- 
tion of  points  of  agreement.  The  missionary  to 
them  must  emphatically  be  a  large,  all-round 
man  of  personality  and,  if  possible,  of  mystical 
tendency.  He  must  be  able  to  realize  that  when 
Muslims  accept  Christianity  they  will  have  to 
make  it  over  for  themselves;  they  will  have  to 
construct  their  own  theology;  and  it  is  his  busi- 
ness to  supply  them  with  general  ideas,  with  con- 
ceptions of  character  and  conduct,  and  to  help 
them  discreetly  in  the  development  of  their  own 
system.  By  no  means  should  he  attempt  to  force 
any  system  upon  them  or  be  surprised  at  any 
deviations  which  they  may  develop. 

He  should  also  be  of  breadth  enough  not  to 
tend,  as  so  many  do,  to  exaggerate  the  evils  of 
his  own  field.  If  he  is  the  right  man,  he  will 
have  fallen  in  love  with  it  and  will  feel  that  the 
people  are  his  people,  to  have  and  to  hold,  even 
though  their  God  may  hardly  be  his  God.  Liking 
is  a  necessity,  and  the  right  man,  while  he  is 
hammering  at  them  himself,  will  be  slow  to  de- 


INTRODUCTION  3 

fame  and  publicly  reproach  them.  When  he  is 
met  by  strange  or  repellent  theological  doctrines 
in  Islam,  it  will  be  for  him  to  consider  in  how 
many  uncouth  ways  the  doctrines  of  Christianity 
are  often  presented,  and  also  that  in  Islam,  as  in 
every  religion,  very  many  different  views  may 
be  held  of  a  single  doctrine.  He  must  take  ac- 
count of  all.  Secondly,  when  he  meets  with 
grave  social  difficulties  and  diseases  in  the  struc- 
ture of  Islam,  he  must  be  a  man  of  mind  enough 
to  remember  the  classes  with  which  he  peculiarly 
comes  in  contact ;  that  they,  on  the  one  hand,  are 
what  we  would  call  the  slum  classes,  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  belong  to  what  is  parallel  to  our 
social  Four  Hundred.  We  would  not  regard 
either  of  those  classes  as  typical  of  our  civiliza- 
tion. I  venture  especially  to  think  that  the 
pastorate  of  a  slum  district  with  us  is  a  very 
close  and  suggestive  parallel  for  many  Muslim 
mission  fields.  As  is  the  case  with  such  a  pastor, 
the  missionary,  whether  man  or  woman,  will  be 
compelled  to  make  himself  thoroughly  acquainted 
with  very  repellent  conditions  of  life,  and  also  to 
estimate  these  at  their  true  value.  In  this  con- 
nection I  trust  that  my  last  lecture  will  be  read 


ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 


sympathetically  and  broadly.  It  will  be,  I  doubt 
not,  a  hard  doctrine  for  many;  but  the  kernel  of 
the  matter  Is  there.  Upon  the  missionary,  just 
as  upon  the  home  pastor,  there  lies  the  heavy 
necessity  that  he  must  know  and  yet  keep  his 
mind  and  heart  clean;  that  he  must  realize  and 
yet  must  hope.  If  he  does  not  know,  he  cannot 
help;  if  he  does  not  realize,  he  cannot  see.  The 
woman  missionary  in  Egypt,  to  take  a  single 
point,  who  does  not  know  about  the  Zar,  cannot 
have  really  known  the  women  of  her  district, 
does  not  intimatelv  touch  their  lives  and  cannot 
fully  help  them. 

The  missionary  must,  further,  from  the  nature 
of  the  field,  be  capable  of,  and  even  have  a  relish 
for,  scholastic  metaphysics  and  philosophical  dis- 
cussion. He  must  himself  be  able  to  enter  into 
and  carry  on  such  discussions.  It  will  always 
be  possible  that  native  converts  may  know  more 
Arabic  metaphysics  than  he  does ;  but  it  is  always 
true  also  that  the  native  convert  cannot  handle 
people,  especially  large  assemblies  of  people,  as  a 
missionary  can. 

He  should,  therefore,  train  himself  to  suit  the 
methods  and  ways  of  these  people.     He  should 


INTRODUCTION  5 

try  to  be  quiet,  slow  even,  and  democratic  in 
attitude.  He  must  not  forget  that  the  Muslim 
peoples  theoretically,  and  to  a  great  extent  prac- 
tically, are  the  most  democratic  in  the  world,  al- 
though this  is  modified  always  by  their  respect 
for  learning,  provided  it  is  the  kind  of  learning 
that  appeals  to  them. 

He  should,  therefore,  cultivate  the  habit  of 
reading  their  literature  very  widely.  He  should 
especially  read  the  more  modern  books  that  are 
the  literature  of  the  masses.  He  should  beware 
of  hmiting  his  reading  to  translations  of  Chris- 
tian literature  into  the  language  of  his  field  or  to 
modern  Christian  literature  written  in  that  lan- 
guage. Such  reading  may  give  him  language; 
but,  being  essentially  foreign,  it  will  never  give 
him  the  native  atmosphere  and  ideas.  He  need 
not  pay  any  especial  attention  to  their  classical 
literature,  except  so  far  as  may  be  required  to 
retain  the  respect  of  the  learned.  Let  him  con- 
sider, here,  the  parallel  of  a  Muslim  missionary 
coming  to  a  Christian  country.  Such  a  mission- 
ary, if  he  went  to  work  really  to  try  to  under- 
stand his  people,  would  require  to  read  upon  two 
sides.     He  would  require  to  understand  Chris- 


6  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

tian  theology,  and  for  that  he  would  need  to  go 
to  the  more  technical  books.  If  he  trusted  en- 
tirely to  what  he  might  hear  in  sermons  or  pick 
up  in  conversation,  he  would  be  seriously  misled 
with  regard  to  the  whole  basis  of  our  faith.  But, 
on  the  other  hand,  to  understand  the  people  he 
would  need  to  go  to  the  current  literature.  He 
would  need  to  go  to  the  newspapers,  the  maga- 
zines, the  popular  books  that  they  would  read. 

I  pass  now  to  the  education  of  the  missionary 
in  a  more  precise  sense,  and  in  what  follows  I 
am  considering  the  case  of  a  man  who  is  to  stand 
independently  upon  his  own  feet  and  not  be  part 
simply  of  some  scholastic  machinery.  In  a  word, 
I  am  thinking  of  the  missionary  who  must  meet 
the  situation  of  his  field  as  a  whole,  alone. 

Now  in  accordance  with  what  I  have  said 
above,  it  is  plain  that  he  must  be  primarily  a  good 
theologian,  of  a  solid,  well-schooled  type.  Even 
the  mysticism  of  Islam  is  metaphysical  and  has  a 
definite  system  under  it  as  a  basis.  He  must 
not  be  of  a  sentimental,  revivalistic  type;  but 
should  have  a  clear,  well-worked  reason  for  his 
faith.  Independent  even  of  any  Biblical  basis, 
he  should,  so  far  as  possible,  be  able  to  work  his 


INTRODUCTION  7 

doctrine  back  to  metaphysical  ideas.  But,  sec- 
ondly, he  must  know  Muslim  theology  thoroughly. 
He  must  have  studied  the  books  of  the  Muslim 
theologians  themselves.  Simply  to  read  the 
Qur'an  is  not  sufficient.  That  might  give  him 
the  Islam  of  Muhammad.  It  v^ould  not  give 
him  the  Islam  of  today. 

But  besides  that,  he  should  study  to  know 
Muslim  life,  the  attitudes  of  Muslims,  their 
governing  ideas.  The  more  of  this  he  has  before 
he  goes  out  to  his  field,  the  better,  and  for  the 
following  reasons.  First,  it  will  guard  him 
against  being  led  into  essential  error  at  the  start. 
Almost  certainly,  when  he  enters  first  upon  his 
field,  he  will  meet  with  what  I  have  described  in 
my  first  lecture  as  a  conspiracy  of  misinforma- 
tion, and  unless  he  has  a  solid  knowledge  of  what 
he  has  to  expect  and  has  also,  from  his  previous 
study,  learned  how  to  test  the  things  told  to  him, 
he  may  receive  ideas  that  will  bias  him  towards 
error  for  all  the  rest  of  his  career.  Second,  on 
no  Muslim  field  is  it  possible,  at  present  at  least, 
to  get  thoroughly  good  teaching.  The  native 
teachers  of  language  may  know  their  languages 
well,  but  it  is  very  rarely  that  they  have  any  ideas 


8  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

of  teaching  them.  And  it  is  still  more  difficult 
to  read  theology  and  philosophy  with  them.  They 
know  their  systems  after  a  fashion;  they  cannot 
state  them  in  any  clear  way.  And  as  for  the 
missionaries  on  the  field,  their  time  is  far  too 
much  taken  up  for  them  to  be  able  to  do  anything 
else  than  give  the  merest  suggestions  to  other 
men.  Third,  a  good  library  is  seldom  accessible 
to  any  mission  field.  Fourth,  whenever  a  mis- 
sionary arrives,  he  is  liable  to  be  sw^allowed  up  at 
once  by  the  work  of  the  station.  It  is  true  that 
he  is  supposed  to  have  a  certain  time  for  prepara- 
tion, but  as  a  matter  of  practice  that  rarely  holds. 
What  I  have  now  said  applies  to  the  classical 
language  of  the  field  but  not  to  the  vernacular. 
No  attempt  should  be  made  to  study  the  vernac- 
ular before  the  missionary  goes  out.  But  if  he 
has  the  beginnings  at  least  of  a  thorough  grasp 
of  the  classical  language,  and  in  this  case  it  is 
Arabic,  he  is  in  possession  of  an  enormously  im- 
portant tool  for  his  work  anywhere.  First,  it 
goes  without  saying  that  in  Arabic-speaking 
lands  a  knowledge  of  classical  or  literary  Arabic 
will  be  a  help  of  primary  importance  to  the  acqui- 
sition of  the  vernacular.     Such  a  knowledge  will 


INTRODUCTION  9 

also  prevent  him  from  falling  into  the  too  preva- 
lent blunder  of  confusing  the  literary  language 
and  the  vernacular.  Second,  the  languages  of 
Persia,  Turkey  and  India  are  largely  permeated 
by  Arabic  vocabulary.  It  may  be  said  that  all 
the  scientific  terms  in  Persian,  Turkish  and 
Hindi  are  of  Arabic  origin.  Third,  Arabic 
can  be  called  most  exactly  the  Latin  of  all  Mus- 
lim countries.  Without  a  knowledge  of  it, 
Muslim  theology,  philosophy  and  the  literature 
of  thought  in  general  are  either  inaccessible  or 
incomprehensible. 

I  would  finally  throw  out  the  suggestion  that 
it  might  be  of  advantage  for  a  missionary,  after 
he  has  received  such  training  as  is  sketched 
above  and  before  he  goes  to  his  own  field,  to  spend 
some  months  in  some  other  Muslim  country,  in 
order  personally  to  study  the  people,  their  ideas 
and  customs,  without  the  handicap  of  a  profes- 
sional environment.  It  Is  very  diflficult  for  a 
professed  missionary  to  secure  intimate  access  to 
Muslims.  It  can  undoubtedly  be  done,  has  been 
done;  but  it  is  certainly  difBcult.  On  the  other 
hand,  a  man  who  knows  Arabic,  has  read  Arabic 
theology  and  is  interested  in  those  things,  will 


lO  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

find  that  they  are  in  themselves  a  passport  with 
Muslims.  They  will  talk  with  him  and  open  their 
ideas  to  him,  it  being  always  understood  that 
they  do  not  regard  him  as  a  missionary.  I  be- 
lieve, therefore,  that  six  months  of  such  contact, 
apart  from  missionary  associations,  would  be  of 
inestimable  value  at  the  beginning  of  any  mis- 
sionary's career.  In  this  I  write  from  my  own 
experience. 

On  methods  I  must  speak  with  still  greater 
diffidence.  A  missionary's  work  I  take  to  con- 
sist of  two  things,  a  planting  of  germinal  ideas 
and  an  upbuilding  of  character.  For  both  the 
slow  way  round  is  best.  With  regard  to  ideas 
especially,  spiritual  and  moral,  the  missionary 
will  probably  discover  that  the  East  has  quite  as 
many  as  he  has  himself,  and  can  propound  them 
much  more  fluently  and  impressively.  But  are 
they  germinal?  Do  they  strike  roots  down  into 
the  being  and  branch  upwards  into  life,  producing 
the  fruits  of  good  works  ?  The  East  has  suffered 
for  centuries  from  creeds  without  relation  to  con- 
duct and  mystical  religion  without  contact  with 
realities.  So  he  will  learn  that  these  beautiful 
sentiments  are  an  inheritance  of  words  only  and 


INTRODUCTION  1 1 

mean  nothing.  His  ideas  must  be  different  and 
show  their  difference.  They  must  be  related  to 
Hfe,  and  he,  in  all  his  walk  and  conversation, 
must  exemplify  them  and  commend  them. 

Again,  in  the  past  the  missionary  has  of  neces- 
sity been  an  educator  and  such  he  must  still  be. 
But  his  province  is  rapidly  changing.  Once, 
practically  all  training,  both  intellectual  and 
moral,  was  in  his  hands ;  now  he  is  being  gradu- 
ally driven  aside  by  the  pressure  of  the  state 
schools.  It  is  plain  that  there  is  going  to  be  an 
abundance  of  intellectual  education  but  little  train- 
ing of  character  and  drill  in  morals.  And  there 
lies  the  future  problem  of  the  missionary.  As 
he  goes  back  to  his  primary  work  of  preaching 
and  witnessing  to  Christ,  how  can  he  retain  his 
influence  upon  education  and  upon  the  upbuilding 
of  the  character  of  the  young?  The  solutions  to 
this  question  are  still  in  the  darkness  and  will 
probably  be  different  in  different  localities  and 
under  different  conditions.  The  Christian  col- 
leges will  help;  it  will  be  long  before  there  are 
Muslim  schools  which  can  compete  with  them. 
The  Christian  high-schools,  too,  handicapped  as 
they  will  be  for  buildings,  apparatus  and  teach- 


12  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

ers,  will  long  hold  their  own  by  the  weight  of 
their  moral  training.  Muslim  parents  will  en- 
trust to  them  their  children,  and  especially  their 
daughters,  rather  than  to  teachers  of  their  own 
faith.  But  everywhere  the  missionary,  whatever 
happens,  must  learn  to  control  by  example  or 
competition  or  stimulus  or  however  it  may  be 
this  upbuilding  of  character. 

But  again,  in  what  direction,  under  this  pres- 
sure of  education.  Is  the  Muslim  world  drifting 
and  towards  what  end  ?  Unless  all  signs  deceive, 
there  lies  before  the  Muslim  peoples  a  terrible 
religious  collapse.  Islam  as  a  religion  is  not 
holding  its  own  against  the  unbelief  that  is  flood- 
ing it  from  the  European  civilization.  Young  men 
are  growing  up  into  crass  and  material  forms 
of  atheism,  forms  that  the  best  intellectual  life  of 
Europe  has  itself  thrown  off.  And  as  education 
spreads  and  deepens,  as  history  vindicates  for 
itself  its  place,  as  the  moral  feeling  becomes  more 
watchful  and  sensitive,  so  the  legend  of  Muham- 
mad will  crumble  and  his  character  be  seen  in  its 
true  light.  And  with  Muhammad  the  entire 
fabric  must  go.  It  is  then  for  the  Christian 
schools  and  preachers  to  save  these  peoples,  not 


INTRODUCTION  I3 

only  for  Christianity  but  for  any  religion  at  all; 
to  vindicate  to  them  the  claims  upon  their  lives 
of  religion  in  the  broadest  sense. 

So  the  missionary  must  learn  to  mix  with  the 
young,  and  especially  with  young  men,  in  easy 
unconstrained  intercourse.  Clubs  and  associa- 
tions with  lectures  and  informal  conversation 
have  a  large  future.  As  their  own  historical 
religion  breaks  before  criticism  and  the  stern  test 
of  the  moral  law,  these  young  men  must  be  led 
to  see  that  all  religion  is  not  therefore  false.  The 
missionary  will  not  be  a  controversialist,  al- 
though he  must  know  controversy  and  be  able 
with  dialectic  to  give  a  reason  for  the  faith  that 
is  in  him.  Often  he  will  find  that  it  Is  not  best 
to  attack  Muhammadanism  directly,  but  to  let  the 
new  ideas  eat  away  its  foundations.  An  attack, 
however  valid  and  logical,  arouses  resistance ;  but 
the  conclusions  which  we  have  reached  for  our- 
selves from  given  and  accepted  premises  are  our 
own.  And  always  it  will  be  his  endeavor  to 
bring  those  with  whom  he  is  In  contact  to  read 
the  Bible  for  themselves  with  open  and  enquiring 
minds.  Then  the  greater  part  of  his  labour  is 
accomplished,  for  what  our  old  divines  called  the 


14  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

witness  of  Scripture  to  itself  is  a  very  striking 
reality,  as  every  missionary  to  Islam  knows.  It 
needs  no  comment,  requires  no  preaching,  but 
does  Its  own  work.  Of  that  I  had  myself,  in  my 
own  experiences,  ample  evidence. 

Thus,  face  to  face  with  the  Bible,  we  can  safely 
leave  the  Muslim.  When  he  needs  help  he  will 
seek  it;  it  is  for  the  missionary  to  see  to  it  that 
so  seeking  he  will  find.  And  in  that  search  of 
his,  very  much  will  depend  upon  the  theological 
training  of  the  missionary  to  whom  he  turns,  for 
none  but  a  schooled  theologian  can  meet  the  needs 
of  an  educated  Muslim.  One  such  convert  to 
Christianity,  a  thorough  theologian  in  his  old 
faith,  told  me  that  the  only  missionary  from 
whom  he  had  really  got  help  in  his  time  of  con- 
fused search  had  been  a  Jesuit  priest ;  he  had  been 
systematically  trained  In  a  scholastic  method  akin 
to  that  of  Muslims  and  could  put  his  faith  in 
logical  form.  But  the  missionary  must  also  see 
to  it  that  he  does  not  by  a  stiff  doctrine  of  inspi- 
ration and  inerrancy  lay  up  future  dangers  for 
his  convert.  It  is  true  that  the  tendency  of  the 
Muslim  enquirer  will  be  to  welcome  such  a  stiff 
doctrine ;  for  him  the  stiffer  it  is,  the  better.    But 


INTRODUCTION  15 

our  Biblical  criticism  is  already  penetrating  the 
East,  and  the  time  is  near  when  faith  built  upon 
Old  Testament  proof-texts  will  not  stand  the 
test.  That  reconstruction  of  our  attitude  towards 
the  Bible  which  we  are  all  facing  is  of  immediate 
and  practical  imminence  in  the  Muslim  field. 
The  missionary  there  must  have  his  opinion  and 
doctrine  ready  to  state  and  to  teach.  But,  on 
another  side,  he  has  a  help  towards  this  and  a 
comfort  and  strength  in  it  which  many  of  us 
now-a-days  seem  to  lack.  All  his  work  brings 
in  upon  him  the  fact  of  the  difference  of  the 
Bible,  taken  broadly,  from  other  books,  and  of 
the  reality  of  its  unique  influence  upon  men. 
Knowing  that,  he  can  go  forward  the  more 
quietly  with  the  working  out  in  theological  form 
of  what  it  means.  The  thing  itself  is  surely 
there. 


LECTURE  I 

THE   MUSLIM    EAST   AS    IT    PRESENTS    ITSELF 

In  this  series  of  the  Hartford-Lamson  Lectures, 
with  the  dehvery  of  which  I  have  been  entrusted, 
I  shall  not  endeavor  to  put  before  you  a  complete 
outline  of  the  theology  of  Islam  nor  any  descrip- 
tion in  systematic  form  of  its  religious  life  and 
thougfht.  I  have  alreadv  dealt  with  these  in  two 
books,  and  I  have  no  desire  to  repeat  what  I  have 
said  there.  Still  less  do  I  desire  to  give  you  in 
lecture  form  a  little  hand-book  of  Muslim  con- 
troversy or  to  describe  the  methods  which  the 
prudent  missionary  should  adopt  and  the  argu- 
ments which  he  should  use.  Such  books  exist; 
but  I  am  very  dubious,  I  confess,  in  the  abstract, 
as  to  their  value  for  the  missionary  or  for  any 
one  else,  and  the  individual  volumes  which  I  have 
examined  have  not  tended  to  do  away  with  my 
doubts/ 

1  By  far  the  best  of  those  which  I  have  seen  is  Cru- 
saders of  the  Twentieth  Century,  by  W.  A.  Rice,  M.  A., 
London,  1910.  It  appeared  after  these  lectures  were  writ- 
ten and  could  certainly  be  used  with  advantage  after  a 
broad  historical  and  theological  foundation  had  been  laid. 

16 


THE    MUSLIM    EAST  1 7 

Let  me  give  one  example  of  the  too  frequent 
tactlessness  and  inaccuracy  of  these  books,  taken 
from  a  much  used  missionary  hand-book.  There 
is  a  chapter  of  the  Our'an  which  is  called  the 
Chapter  of  the  Cow.  It  gains  that  name  from 
the  fact  that  there  is  mention  in  it  of  the  Red 
Heifer  of  the  Mosaic  law.  But  it  so  happens 
that  in  another  place  the  law  of  marriage  and 
divorce  is  set  forth.  In  this  manual  of  contro- 
versy, then,  the  title  of  "The  Cow"  is  used  to 
illustrate  and  demonstrate  the  supposed  Muslim 
attitude  towards  women — that  they  are  regarded 
as  cattle.  Now,  it  would  have  been  perfectly 
allowable  to  quote  for  that  purpose  verse  223, 
''Your  women  are  a  tillage  of  yours,"  always 
provided  that  the  use  of  this  metaphor  was 
explained  from  the  context;  but  the  title  of  the 
chapter  has  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  this 
subject. 

So  there  are  here  two  very  unfortunate  things : 
one  of  them  is  the  ignorance  displayed ;  the  other 
of  them  is  the  attitude  of  mind  which  is  exhibited. 
The  determination  is  to  make  a  point  at  all 
hazards,  in  this  case  the  somewhat  important 
hazard,  or  certainty,  of  alienating  and  repelling 


1 8  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

any  intelligent  Muslim  to  whom  such  an  argu- 
ment may  come.  Nor,  in  general,  need  I  empha- 
size to  you  the  danger  that  lies  in  all  knowledge 
gained  in  controversial  form.  No  true  knowl- 
edge can  be  reached  In  that  fashion;  and  it  is 
not,  therefore,  in  controversial  form  or  in  such 
a  way  that  it  can  be  used  at  once  in  debate  by 
the  missionary  that  I  wish  to  communicate  any- 
thing in  the  course  of  these  lectures.  If  the 
combative  spirit  is  awake  in  the  missionary,  It 
will  soon  be  aroused  in  the  Muslim.  For  this 
reason  I  regret  that  in  the  recent  renewal  of  inter- 
est in  Muslim  missions  there  has  been  so  much 
warlike  denunciation  and  beating  of  the  crusad- 
ing drum.  The  Muslim  world  knows  of  it  and 
takes  its  attitude  from  it,  and  the  young  men  who 
go  out  under  its  influence  cannot  easily  return 
to  the  sanity,  sympathy  and  charity  which  the 
spirit  of  their  Master  requires. 

But  there  is  another  danger  In  such  a  method 
as  this,  the  very  great  danger  that  always  lies 
in  the  belief  that  if  you  simply  study  how  to  do 
a  thing,  you  will,  forthwith,  become  able  to  do 
it.  We  see  this  again  and  again  amongst  our- 
selves with  regard  to  such  an  ordinary,  everyday 


THE    MUSLIM    EAST  IQ 

thing  as  teaching.  There  are  innumerable  meth- 
ods of  teaching;  but  it  all  depends  in  the  end 
upon  the  teacher,  and  the  man  who  depends  upon 
his  methods  will  never  become  a  teacher. 

Again,  there  is  still  another  danger,  the  danger 
of  difference.  It  was  said  to  me,  for  instance, 
by  a  missionary,  about  the  same  book  from  which 
I  have  culled  the  above  argument,  that  inasmuch 
as  it  was  constructed  by  a  man  who  worked  in 
another  field  from  his  own,  he  found  it  of  no  use. 
Being  controversial,  it  dealt  with  details  and 
not  with  simple  elements,  and  details  tend  every- 
where to  be  different. 

But  what  I  desire  to  put  before  you  now  is  Islam 
as  it  will  always  present  itself.  As  it  has  always 
presented  itself,  perhaps  I  should  say;  I  know 
nothing  about  the  future.  But,  at  any  rate,  it 
will  portray  Islam  in  its  broad  outline;  as  you 
may  see  it  in  any  Muslim  land;  in  its  spirit  and 
not  in  its  details.  In  a  word,  I  would  display 
and  turn  before  you,  if  I  may  so  put  it,  the  many 
coloured  globe  of  Muslim  life  and  thought — for 
remember  that  there  is  life  and  there  is  thought 
there  too — and  show  to  you  Islam  in  certain  of 
its  permanent  and  outstanding  phases  and  aspects. 


20  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

But  when  I  say  Islam,  what  does  that  mean? 
I  can  best  bring  its  meaning  home  by  saying  that 
Islam  for  the  Muslim  means  formally  and  histor- 
ically the  same  thing  that  the  word  Christendom 
does  for  us.  It  is  the  broadest  of  all  expressions 
for  them;  just  as  Christendom  covers  all  our 
thought,  all  our  life,  all  our  history.  It  is  a 
unity  to  them,  a  unity  more  absolute  than  the 
term  Christendom  covers  for  us ;  but  it  is  a  unity 
of  the  same  nature;  and  only  as  you  look  at  it 
in  that  way — as  a  unity  and  not  as  a  multitude 
of  details — can  you  possibly  get  any  idea  of  its 
real,  essential  character. 

What,  then,  I  am  now  going  to  put  before  you 
is  simply  this  Islam,  and  I  desire  to  show  you 
some  of  its  phases  and  aspects,  such  as  may  be 
suggestive  of  the  whole,  such  as  may  open  up, 
and  that  especially  for  the  missionary,  what  lies 
under  that  term  Islam.  It  will,  then,  be  for  you 
who  may  be  interested  in  the  Muslim  world  and 
may  be  looking  toward  a  missionary  career  to  fol- 
low this  up.  I  suggest  to  you  a  beginning  and  a 
search,  and  I  put  before  you  some  examples. 

But,  again,  in  these  examples  I  fear  that  I 
must  be  personal  in  tone.     What  I  have  to  say  to 


THE    MUSLIM    EAST  21 

you  is  not  drawn  only  from  what  I  have  read; 
it  is  drawn  also  from  what  I  have  seen;  from 
the  contact  which  I  have  had  with  Muslims.  It 
would  have  been  impossible  for  me,  I  am  free 
to  admit,  to  deliver  this  course  of  lectures  in  their 
present  form  a  year  ago ;  and  it  was  only  by  the 
permission  and  help  of  the  Seminary,  which 
enabled  me  to  pass  a  year  in  Muslim  lands, 
that  the  way  was  opened  and  that  much  of  such 
insight  as  I  have  gained  was  made  a  possibility. 
I  shall,  therefore,  have  to  draw  very  largely  in 
the  future  upon  my  own  personal  experiences. 
I  shall  need  to  ask  your  indulgence  for  much 
introduction  of  myself  in  describing  the  people 
I  have  met  and  the  things  I  have  seen.  And, 
with  that,  I  must  also  beg  of  you  to  believe  that 
when  I  put  before  you  any  anecdote,  it  is  abso- 
lutely the  fact  as  it  came  to  me ;  that  in  no  way, 
in  no  degree,  have  I  touched  up  my  experiences 
in  order  to  make  them  more  telling. 

But  above  all,  I  would  hear  and  throughout 
suggest  and  entreat  sympathy.  I  would  lay 
emphasis  on  the  great  facts  of  religious  unity 
between  us  and  the  Muslim  world,  and  not  upon 
the  points  of  controversy  that  may  arise.     It  is 


2.2  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

my  endeavor  and  desire,  as  you  will  see,  to  say 
here  what  may  help  the  missionary  to  understand 
Islam,  rather  than  what  may  be  of  direct  advan- 
tage to  him  in  order  to  convert  Islam.  After 
he  understands,  he  may  know  how  to  deal  with 
the  problem ;  but  my  first  purpose  is  to  help  him — 
so  far  as  is  in  my  power — to  understand;  and  an 
understanding  can  be  reached  only  by  thorough, 
entire  sympathy,  by  sinking  the  points  of  differ- 
ence and  holding  the  points  of  unity. 

For  example,  several  times  in  my  wanderings 
I  was  brought  into  contact — religious  contact — 
with  darwishes.  Among  them  I  met  with  as 
true  hospitality,  as  fervent  religious  feeling  as  I 
have  anywhere  experienced.  Their  method  of 
life  and  their  ideas  I  will  take  up  hereafter  in 
detail.  At  this  point,  I  would  allude  only  to  the 
sympathy  and  openness  with  which  they  spoke 
with  me  upon  religious  things — the  broad  religion 
of  the  spirit,  be  it  always  understood.  I  will 
admit  that  I  was  exceedingly  careful  not  to  speak 
of  Muhammad  as  ''The  False  Prophet" — as  I 
have  heard  too  many  do — and  when  they  spoke  of 
my  Father  in  Heaven  as  Rabhiina,  *'Our  Lord," 
I  took  their  words  according  to  the  meaning, 


THE    MUSLIM    EAST  2^ 

and  together  we  were  able  to  speak  of  Our  Lord, 
meaning  God  Most  High,  and  thus  meet  upon 
a  common  plane. 

Further,  it  is  certainly  true  that  many  things  in 
the  world  of  Islam  were  a  great  deal  more  open  to 
me,  that  much  more  was  shown  to  me  and  said 
to  me,  coming  as  I  did  as  a  wandering  scholar 
amongst  them,  a  student  of  Arabic  and  of  their 
religion,  than  if  I  had  been  recognized  by  them 
as  a  missionary.  But,  at  the  same  time,  I  am 
persuaded  that  these  things  could  be  more  open, 
more  accessible  to  a  great  many  missionaries 
than  they  are.     It  all  lies  in  the  attitude. 

Let  me  now  take  up  some  examples  of  such 
contact,  such  reaching  and  touching  the  Muslim 
world  in  what  I  would  call  a  sympathetic  way. 
For  many  people  sympathy  means  weakness. 
I  confess  to  having  a  weakness  for  saints.  They 
make  the  romance  of  the  religious  life,  and 
their  biographies — try,  for  example,  The  Golden 
Legend — move  in  an  air  as  remote  from  our  tread- 
mill existence  as  The  Arabian  Nights,  and  yet  are 
instinct  with  spiritual  realities  and  vitalizing 
energies.  For  them  the  ancient  world  is  ever 
fresh   and  young,   and  the   Spirit  of   God  still 


24  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

broods  visibly  over  it.  The  milk  of  Paradise  is 
on  their  lips  and  they  hear  the  footsteps  of  the 
Almighty.  There  is  nothing  too  wonderful  to 
happen  to  them,  and  through  everything  that 
happens  they  look  straight  back  to  God.  But  of 
such  absolute  saints  we,  in  these  western  lands 
and  in  our  harder  age,  can  know  alive  but  few, 
and  I,  for  my  part,  have  had  to  fall  back  upon 
dead  saints,  and  of  these  Islam  has  furnished  me 
with  an  abundance. 

Before  I  went  to  the  East  at  all,  I  had  come 
to  know  a  good  deal  about  some  of  the  more 
important  saints  of  Islam ;  I  had  read  their  books, 
had  studied  their  lives  and  ideas  and  had  come 
to  respect  and  esteem  a  great  many  of  them,  in 
a  very  high  degree.  When  I,  then,  found  myself 
on  Muslim  soil,  the  possibility  was  opened  to  me 
of  visiting  the  tombs  of  those  saints  whom  I  thus 
knew  through  books  and  whom  I  respected  and 
reverenced.  What  was  I  to  do?  The  course 
that  I  followed,  a  course  which  I  believe  was 
perfectly  right  under  such  circumstances,  was 
to  visit  them  frankly  in  reverence,  and  I  found 
that  the  fact  that  I  did  so — that  I  behaved,  as 
my  Eastern  friends  would  say,  like  a  religious- 


THE    MUSLIM    EAST  2$ 

minded  man  and  a  gentleman — helped  me  indef^ 
initely  in  my  intercourse  with  Muslims. 

There  is  one  usage,  for  example,  that  is  of  rule 
when  visiting  the  tombs  of  Muslim  saints. 
You  advance  to  the  railing  that  surrounds  the 
tomb,  you  hold  it  in  your  right  hand — in  the 
East  do  everything  public  with  the  right  hand — 
and  you  recite  the  Fatiha,  the  first  chapter  of 
the  Qur'an,  which  holds  pretty  much  the  place 
with  the  Muslim  that  the  Lord's  Prayer  does 
with  us.  Now  let  me  recite  to  you  a  translation 
of  the  Fatiha.  It  runs  thus : — In  the  name  of 
Allah,  the  merciful  Compassionator!  Praise 
helongeth  unto  Allah,  the  Lord  of  the  Worlds, 
the  King  of  the  Day  of  Doom.  Thee  do  we 
serve  and  of  Thee  do  we  ask  aid.  Guide  us  in 
the  straight  path,  the  path  of  those  to  whom 
Thou  hast  been  gracious,  not  of  those  with  whom 
Thou  art  angered  or  of  those  who  stray.     Amen. 

I  do  not  know  how  strict  theologians  would 
regard  my  action ;  but  I  confess  I  found  no  diffi- 
culty at  all  when  I  had  come  to  the  tombs  of  these 
saints,  in  reciting  the  above  prayer  according 
to  usage.  Very  frequently  there  would  be  an 
inscription  on  the  door  of  the  tomb  asking,  ''O 


26  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

thou  visitor  to  my  tomb,  forget  me  not  with  a 
pious  petition,  but  lift  up  thy  hands  unto  the 
Lord  and  recite  the  Fdtiha  for  me."  I  do  not 
know  whether  the  saints  in  question  were  much 
benefited  by  this.  I  do  not  know  whether  any 
one  of  those  standing  by  were  especially  spiritu- 
ally benefited  by  it.  I  do  know,  however,  that 
I  was  benefited  by  feeling  the  nearness  of  the 
spiritual  kindred  of  all  that  call  upon  the  Lord, 
and  I  know,  too,  that  those  Muslims  who 
saw  me  do  this  or  who  knew  that  I  did  it, 
felt  that  here  was  a  spiritual  unity,  that  this 
man,  Christian  though  he  might  be,  reverenced 
their  saint  and  knew  what  it  meant  to  recognize 
holiness  and  the  life  hid  in  God. 

For  example,  in  the  neighborhood  of  Jerusalem, 
on  the  Mount  of  Olives,  there  is  what  is  called  the 
Mosque  of  the  Ascension.  It  is  a  very  curiously 
sacred  place,  because  it  is  holy  ground  for  both 
Muslims  and  Christians.  Islam  does  not  accept 
the  crucifixion;  it,  therefore,  does  not  accept  the 
resurrection,  but  it  does  accept  the  ascension. 
It  holds  that  Christ  ascended  into  one  of  the 
heavens,  which  one  is  a  matter  of  dispute,  and 
is  there  even   now,  although   it  will  not  put  it 


THE    MUSLIM    EAST  2^ 

in  the  form  that  He  sat  down  at  the  right  hand 
of  God  the  Father  Almighty.  Along  the  walls 
of  the  mosque  there  are  altars  for  each  one  of  the 
Christian  sects,  and  upon  Ascension  Day  their 
priests  are  admitted  to  the  mosque  and  it  is  free 
to  them  to  celebrate  upon  their  own  altars. 
When  I  went  to  that  mosque  and  visited  it  as  one 
of  our  sacred  spots,  I  found  that  there  was  near 
it  a  darwish  monastery — I  have  learned  since  that 
in  former  times  it  was  an  Augustinian  Abbey 
— ^and,  as  I  did  almost  always  on  such  occasions, 
I  visited  the  monastery  also.  I  was  received 
there  in  the  most  friendly  manner.  There  was 
a  young  man  sitting  at  the  door  of  the  monastery 
repeating  or  reciting  the  Qur'an,  with  the  book 
spread  open  upon  his  knee,  but  reciting  it,  as  they 
commonly  do,  from  memory,  and  when  I  came  to 
stand  before  him,  with  lifted  hand  I  repeated  the 
common  prayer  that  would  bring  us  both  together. 
Again,  on  another  occasion  in  the  neighbor- 
hood of  Cairo,  at  the  tomb  of  the  great  mystical 
poet,  *Umar  ibn  al-Farid,  I  found  the  same 
observance  of  the  greatest  possible  value.  I 
remember  when  I  advanced  in  the  fitting  manner 
towards  the  grated  window  which  looks  in  on  the 


28  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

tomb  of  the  saint,  hearing  whispers  from  the 
Muslim  guardians  of  the  tomb,  "He  knows  what 
is  the  right  thing  to  do.  He  has  a  sense  of 
reverence."  The  same  thing  happened  when  I 
visited,  in  Cairo,  the  tomb-mosque  of  the  great 
mystical  saint,  ash-Sha'ranI ;  I  did  it  with  as  great 
reverence  for  the  man,  for  his  work  and  person- 
ality, as  I  have  ever  felt  at  any  tomb  to  which 
my  steps  have  been  led.  Of  course,  I  might 
say  that  I  was  careful  in  all  this  to  pick  my  saints. 
There  are  many  saints  in  the  Muslim  calendar, 
as  in  that  of  Christendom,  that  I  could  not  visit 
with  any  reverence  at  all.  They  may  have  had 
their  redeeming  qualities ;  but  these  did  not  appeal 
to  me.  But  there  are  many  saints — and  this 
is  my  point — with  regard  to  whom  I  felt  and 
feel  that  there  is  a  perfect  possibility  for  the 
most  absolute  Christian  to  visit  their  tombs  and 
to  feel  that  he  is  visiting  the  tombs  of  good  men, 
and  I  am  persuaded  that  my  being  able  to  do 
so  suggested  nothing  to  the  Muslims  that  were 
with  me,  but  simple  unity  and  charity.  It  is  per- 
fectly true  that  occasionally  some  may  have 
thought  that  I  was  personally  inclined  towards 
Islam.     If  they  did,  I  could  not  help  it.     But 


THE    MUSLIM    EAST  29 

here  is  a  curious  illustration  which  shows  how 
such  a  thing  could  arise  only  in  the  case  of  the 
ignorant. 

I  came  to  a  saint's  tomb  at  Tiberias.  The 
tomb  itself  was  nothing  more  than  a  rubbish  heap, 
as  the  tombs,  even  of  the  saints,  tend  to  become 
in  the  East;  In  fact  I  came  upon  it  unawares. 
I  had  no  knowledge  that  there  was  any  saint's 
tomb  there,  until  I  heard  my  guide  being  abused 
by  some  one  for  permitting  me  to  enter  the 
sacred  precincts.  What  did  my  guide  say? 
Well,  very  nearly  in  part,  the  words  of  the  elders 
about  the  centurion.  ''He  loveth  our  people,  and 
the  Lord  may  open  his  heart  to  Islam."  Such 
cases  were  rare;  but  the  cases  of  mutual  under- 
standing on  the  basis  of  differing  faith  were 
not  rare. 

I  am  perfectly  conscious,  of  course,  that  a 
missionary  might  hesitate  to  follow  such  a  method 
as  this  in  the  country  of  his  labours;  but  I  can 
imagine  also  that  a  man  of  strong  personality, 
and  sympathetic  genius,  one  of  the  giants  of  the 
mission  field  of  whom  we  have  known  many, 
such  a  man  might  do  it  and  still  remain  a  mis- 
sionary and  all  the  better   a  missionary   for  it. 


30  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

He  would  not  fear  all  the  time  lest  he  should  be 
misunderstood.  The  people  around  him  would 
know  well  what  kind  of  a  man  he  was  and  why 
he  did  this  thing. 

But  now  I  must  turn  from  these  preliminaries. 
I  have  been  endeavoring  in  them  to  give  some 
clue  as  to  the  way  in  which  I  approach  my  subject. 
It  is  the  sincere  way  of  sympathy ;  the  broad  way 
of  unity ;  the  honest  way  of  endeavoring  to  under- 
stand from  within. 

What  is  the  first  thing — the  first  thing  out- 
standing and  to  be  reckoned  with — that  meets 
any  one  who  studies  Islam  on  the  spot,  whether 
he  be  a  student  or  a  missionary  or  simply  a 
traveller?  I  think  that  it  is  what  can  only  be 
described,  most  unhappily  but  truly,  as  a  con- 
spiracy of  misinformation.  All  seem  to  be  leagued 
together  to  this  end,  to  tell  you  the  thing 
that  is  not.  And  this  conspiracy  of  misinfor- 
mation is  so  fundamental,  is  so  subtle,  goes 
through  so  many  phases  of  life,  is  so  constant, 
that  the  student  or  the  missionary  will  have  to 
deal  with  it  throughout  his  entire  residence  in  the 
East.     It  is  not  a  thing  that  you  meet  on  the 


THE    MUSLIM    EAST  31 

threshold  and  then  pass  beyond.  It  must  always 
be  reckoned  with. 

Now,  because  it  is  so  fundamental  and  con- 
stant, I  must  spend  a  little  time  over  it.  This 
is  not  a  case,  understand,  of  paying  too  much 
attention  to  the  statements  of  the  common  drago- 
man; him  even  the  rawest  Cook's  tourist,  whom 
the  native  calls  a  "Cookee,"  has  learned  to  dis- 
trust ;  nor  is  it  the  case  of  the  mercenary  hanger- 
on  upon  missions,  and  so  far  as  my  experience 
goes  I  do  not  think  there  are  so  many  of  these  as  is 
commonly  supposed;  nor  is  it  even  in  general  a 
case  of  the  Oriental  desire  to  please.  It  goes  a 
great  deal  farther  and  a  great  deal  deeper.  Even 
Europeans  who  have  been  long  in  the  East  are 
themselves  dragged  into  it  and  come  to  be  incon- 
ceivably reckless  in  their  statements.  Here  is  an 
example. 

In  all  the  Muslim  countries  or  towns  that  have 
been  taken  by  force  of  arms  from  unbelievers 
it  is  a  custom  that  the  khatih,  the  preacher  who 
delivers  the  Friday  prayer-sermon,  should  carry 
in  his  hand  a  sword  and  should  lean  upon  it  in 
preaching  as  though  it  were  a  staff.  That  holds 
true  only  in  such  towns  as  have  been  taken  by 


32  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

force  of  arms.  When,  then,  I  began  to  try  to 
get  some  first-hand  information  about  this,  I 
immediately  met  with  the  most  extraordinary  nest 
of  fabrications.  One  man,  a  man  of  high  posi- 
tion in  Cairo,  a  European  who  had  spent  there 
the  greater  part  of  his  hfe,  w^ho  had  been  in 
intimate  contact  with  Mushms  precisely  on  that 
side  of  things — mosques  and  religious  observ- 
ances— and  who,  you  would  have  imagined, 
should  have  known  about  this  if  any  one  did, 
this  man  assured  me  gravely  that  it  was  a  Mus- 
lim custom  to  shake  this  sword  to  the  four  winds 
of  heaven  as  a  sign  that  Islam  must  conquer  all 
the  world.  Now,  there  is  absolutely  not  a  word 
of  truth  in  that.  The  sword  is  used  as  a  staff 
and  as  a  staff  only.  Of  course,  it  is  also  a  symbol 
of  the  historic  conquest  of  that  place  where  it 
Is  used. 

Another  bit  of  curious  misinformation  that  I 
gathered  with  regard  to  this  same  thing  was  that 
the  MusHms  did  not  like  Christians  to  see  this 
sword.  I  was  induced,  for  a  time,  rather  to 
believe  that  there  must  be  something  in  this  sec- 
ond point  because,  when  being  shown  different 
mosques  and  enquiring  as  to  this  thing  and  that, 


THE    MUSLIM    EAST  33 

I  experienced  difficulty  in  obtaining  a  sight  of  the 
sword  used  by  the  khattb.  And  when  the  guard- 
ian of  a  mosque  did  finally  show  it  to  me — there 
it  was  of  painted  wood  only — I  thought  I  saw 
a  somewhat  suspicious  smile  upon  his  face.  But 
that  idea,  again,  I  discovered  in  time  was  abso- 
lutely false.  There  is  no  such  feeling  regarding 
the  khatWs  sword.  Let  me  illustrate  to  show 
how  false  it  was. 

In  the  course  of  my  wanderings,  I  came  to 
Nablus,  the  ancient  Shechem,  and  there  I  had 
peculiar  opportunities  of  access  to  the  mosques. 
Now  Nablus  has  the  reputation  of  being  a  very 
fanatical  town,  a  town  where  Christians  are  in 
danger  of  being  ill-used  and  will  certainly  not  be 
received  in  a  friendly  fashion.  I  myself  had  no 
experience  of  the  kind.  For  example,  in  the 
great  mosque,  when  I  began  to  speak — of  course 
in  Arabic — with  the  men  whom  I  met  there 
about  the  different  parts  of  the  building  and  their 
use,  they  showed  me  the  sword — in  this  case  a 
real  sword — and  made  me  tell  them  what  the 
usage  regarding  it  was,  where  it  was  used  and 
where  not.  It  was  for  them,  evidently,  a  kind  of 
examination  in  Muslim  science,  and  when  I  had 
3 


34  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

passed,  they  at  once  received  me  with  open  arms. 
I  was  an  obvious  kafir  in  an  egregious  sun-helmet 
and  with  a  Baedeker  in  my  pocket,  but  I  was  not 
entirely  uneducated.  A  teacher  in  the  College 
or  madrasa  connected  with  the  mosque  led  me 
into  his  private  room  and  we  had  some  interesting 
talk  on  theology  and  metaphysics;  but  as  to  the 
sword,  there  was  not  a  trace  of  evidence  that 
there  was  any  secrecy  about  it. 

Again,  when  the  caravan  of  pilgrims  for  Mecca 
sets  out  from  Cairo,  there  accompanies  it  what 
is  called  the  Mahmal.  It  is  a  small,  square 
palanquin,  mounted  on  the  back  of  a  camel; 
a  kind  of  a  camel-carriage  in  a  very  convention- 
alized form  in  which  a  woman  might  possibly 
travel.  Few  foreigners  in  Cairo  seem  to  know 
what  is  its  purpose  or  meaning.  I  was  told  that 
in  this  palanquin,  a  thing  of  limited  size  and 
carried  on  the  back  of  this  one  camel,  there  was 
packed  the  covering  called  the  kiswa,  or  robe, 
which  is  spread  over  the  Ka'ba  at  Mecca  and 
which  is  renewed  every  year — a  most  obvious 
absurditv.  One  ladv  even  assured  me,  and  this 
is  an  illustration  of  how  careful  you  must  be 
in  accepting  information  from  what  seems  a  cer- 


THE    MUSLIM    EAST  35 

tain  source,  that  she  knew  that  such  must  be  the 
use  of  it  because  she  had  been  told  so  by  the 
French  tutor  of  one  of  the  sons  of  the  Khedive. 
She  may  have  misunderstood  him ;  but  if  he  did 
tell  her  that,  then  he  was  very  ignorant  or  else 
he  was  lying.  The  fact  about  this  palanquin 
is  that  it  is  simply  a  symbol  of  sovereignty. 
Historically  it  is  a  conventionalized  reproduction 
of  the  palanquin  in  which  the  Mamluk  queen 
Shajarat-ad-durr — the  same  who  held  St.  Louis 
to  ransom — made  the  pilgrimage  to  Mecca.  It 
now  takes  the  place  of  the  Khedive  himself  going 
on  pilgrimage  to  Mecca,  and  it  is  very  much  the 
same  thing,  one  might  say,  as  when  in  old- 
fashioned  England  a  man  who  could  not  go  to 
a  funeral  sent  his  carriage  by  way  of  showing 
respect.  When  the  Hajj  caravan  sets  out  from 
the  great  square  under  the  citadel  at  Cairo,  the 
Khedive  solemnly  gives  over  the  halter  of  this 
camel  Into  the  hand  of  the  Amir  al-Hajj,  the 
leader  of  the  pilgrimage,  and  thus  constitutes 
him  his  representative  on  the  journey.  Similarly, 
he  receives  back  the  halter  when  the  Hajj  returns. 
These  are  cases  due  to  foreign  ignorance;  but 
even  the  native  scholar  may  supply  misinforma- 


36  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

tion.  It  may  be  unintentionally.  With  one  of  my 
Cairo  friends,  a  graduate  of  Azhar  University. 
I  had  a  great  deal  of  trouble  once  in  getting  at  a 
certain  doctrine.  He  could  not  remember  the 
point  I  was  trying  to  develop  or  any  passage 
bearing  upon  it.  He  had  never  seen  it  in  any 
theological  book.  But  that  was  only  a  curious 
example  of  what  you  might  call  the  Oriental 
possibility  of  passing  things  over.  I  had,  eventu- 
ally, to  show  him  the  doctrine  in  the  IJiyd  of 
al-Ghazzali,  a  regular  authority  at  the  Azhar. 
Again,  another  case,  and  this  time  intentional. 
When  I  was  reading  with  a  distinguished  scholar 
a  commentary  upon  the  Qur'an,  we  came  to  the 
passage  which  I  have  already  translated  to  you 
as  'The  Lord  of  the  Worlds.'*  Now,  the  univer- 
sally accepted  interpretation  of  that  phrase — 
accepted  by  all  Islam — is  that  "the  worlds"  are 
the  three  classes  of  intelligent  beings,  mankind, 
the  angels  and  the  jinn,  the  genies  of  our  old 
^Arabian  Nights.  But  my  guide  had  no  intention 
of  saying  anything  in  my  presence  that  would 
expose  to  the  ridicule  of  an  unbeliever  the  super- 
stitions and  weaknesses  of  the  Muslims.  I  could 
get  nothing  more  from  him  in  Interpretation  of 


THE    MUSLIM    EAST  37 

these  words  than  that  they  meant  "everything." 
Kidl  shay'  he  said  again  and  again,  and  further 
than  that  he  would  not. 

This  misinformation  is  so  thorough,  goes  so 
deep,  is  given  to  you  with  such  an  air  of  cer- 
tainty, that  I  must  confess  that,  though  I  had 
been  reading  Arabic  and  MusHm  theology  for 
some  twenty-five  years,  I  was  staggered  at  several 
points  before  I  discovered  what  were  the  possi- 
bilities in  the  case,  and  was  for  some  weeks  in 
doubt  as  to  whether  my  Arabic  authorities  might 
not  have  misled  me.  But  when  it  came  to  getting 
information  upon  questions  of  fact — not  of  theol- 
ogy or  anything  of  that  kind  but  of  historical 
events  in  the  past  and  situations  and  attitudes 
in  the  present — I  was  driven,  at  last,  to  absolute 
agnosticism.  How  did  the  different  officials  stand 
with  Lord  Cromer?  What  of  the  Khedive's 
matrimonial  experiments?  I  was  told  so  many 
opposing  things  and  that  so  dogmatically,  that 
I  had  to  give  up  trying  to  reach  anything  upon 
which  I  could  depend  as  to  such  points. 

The  thing  is  not  simply  untruthfulness,  it  is  a 
strange  carelessness  as  to  fact.  On  one  side,  the 
Oriental   and   the  Orientalized   European  has   a 


38  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

feeling  of,  as  you  might  say,  "What  does  it  mat- 
ter anyway?"  It  is  the  slackness  of  one  for 
whom  this  world  is  only  the  fleeting  show  of  a 
phantasmagoria.  And  he  recognizes  it  himself. 
The  phrase  by  which  the  Cairene  is  known  and 
by  which  also  he  himself  marks  his  typical  repre- 
sentative like  the  Spanish,  ''Quien  sahe?"  is 
Ma'alesh,  "It  doesn't  matter."  "What  indeed." 
it  is  as  though  he  asked,  "does  really  matter  in 
this  world?"  And,  on  another  side,  he  has  the 
creative  imagination  of  a  child.  If  the  Oriental 
does  not  know  what  you  ask  him,  he  will  create 
something  for  you,  and  he  is  so  w^ell  pleased  with 
his  creation  that  it  becomes  solid  and  real  in  his 
eyes.  This  he  does,  apparently,  with  a  good 
conscience  because  it  fills  a  vacuum  of  knowledge, 
a  thing  which  he,  like  nature,  abhors.  So  far 
as  I  can  remember,  I  met  only  one  man  who  was 
prepared  to  say,  "I  do  not  know,"  and,  most 
astounding  of  all,  that  was  a  donkey-boy.  When 
questioned  as  to  the  names  of  mosques  or 
tombs,  he  would  pause  and  think,  and  at  last, 
if  need  were,  come  to  the  point  of  admitted 
ignorance.  But  the  dragoman,  be  it  noted, 
always  knows. 


THE    MUSLIM    EAST  39 

Now,  there  follows  this;  and  it  is  the  moral. 
There  is  danger  for  the  missionary  of  believing 
too  much,  and  there  is  perhaps  greater  danger 
of  his  becoming  cynical  and  believing  nothing 
at  all. 

The  practical  consequence  is  that  the  man  who 
is  prepared  to  believe  anything  on  less  than  the 
word  of  a  dozen  witnesses  should  never  go  to  the 
East.  Nor  should  the  man  go  who  is  inclined 
to  hold  that  all  men  are  liars,  and  to  become 
soured  in  consequence.  You  have  got  to  take 
things  as  you  find  them  and  keep  an  open  mind. 
And  let  me  add  to  this  a  still  more  practical 
suggestion.  It  is  eminently  desirable  that  mis- 
sionaries, before  they  reach  the  East  and  are 
plunged  into  its  chaos  of  misinformation,  should 
have  learned  at  least  enough  of  Islam  to  main- 
tain a  cautious  attitude.  I  have  known  cases 
where  such  errors,  remaining  inveterate,  have 
biassed  better  knowledge  for  years.  This,  then, 
is  one  outstanding  aspect  of  the  East,  and,  I 
think,  the  first  that  will  meet  any  one  who  begins 
to  look  at  all  into  the  subject. 

Another  is  the  Oriental's  assured  feeling  of 
religious  superiority.     It  is  a  somewhat  galling 


40  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

thing  to  us  of  the  West  to  meet  people  who 
dare,  calmly,  unquestioningly,  without  imagining 
that  there  can  be  a  shadow  of  doubt,  to  look  down 
upon  us  and  to  say,  "But  you  cannot  know  this; 
we  know,  we  understand."  Their  certitude  is 
as  absolute  as  that  of  Browning's  Abt  Vogler, 
"'Tis  we  musicians  know."  But  such  is,  undoubt- 
edly, the  fundamental  attitude  of  the  Muslim 
East  towards  Western  religious  life. 

Here  are  two  illustrations.  At  the  Congress 
of  Orientalists  held  at  Algiers  in  April,  1905, 
Prof.  Karl  Vollers  read  a  paper  on  the  origin 
of  the  Qur'an.  His  thesis  was  that  the  Qur'an, 
as  we  have  it  at  present,  in  its  precise  wording 
and  grammatical  form,  did  not  proceed  from 
Muhammad ;  that  the  language  which  Muhammad 
used  had  been  of  a  colloquial  type;  and  that  it 
was  later,  at  the  hands  of  editors,  that  the  Qur'an 
had  been  put  into  the  careful  grammatical  form 
which  it  at  present  has.  This  thesis  was,  cer- 
tainly, new  and  strange,  and  European  scholars 
are  not  yet,  by  any  means,  ready  to  accept  it. 
But  how  was  it  received  by  Muslim  scholars? 
For  the  first  time,  at  Algiers,  a  large  number 
of  these  were  present  at  the  Congress  of  Orien- 


THE    MUSLIM    EAST  4I 

talists.  Professor  Voller's  paper  raised  with 
them  tremendous  opposition.  One  thing  was 
clear ;  the  world  of  scholars  in  Islam  had  not  yet 
reached  the  point  of  objectively  discussing  any- 
thing looking  towards  religion,  so  that  the  remot- 
est approach  to  a  Congress  of  Religions  would 
be  utterly  impossible  if  Muslims  were  to  form 
part  of  it.  One  Muslim,  whom  I  afterwards  met 
in  Egypt,  delivered  a  long  and  personal  address 
against  Professor  Vollers,  and  finished  with  this, 
"In  the  matter  of  the  Qur'an  we  will  take  nothing 
from  a  stranger."  He  was  prepared — they  are 
all  prepared — to  learn  from  Europe  and  America 
anything  dealing  with  the  material  side  of  life. 
Such  things  of  the  world  do  not  really  matter, 
of  course;  but  when  it  comes  to  religion,  when 
it  comes  to  the  world  of  religious  thought,  there 
the  Muslim  must  stand  alone.  He  is  superior  to 
all  Christians;  knows  it;  feels  it.  No  Christian 
can  really  feel  the  things  of  God  as  he  does. 

Again,  another  example  of  the  same.  One  of 
my  Muslim  friends  with  whom  I  came  to  be  on 
a  very  pleasant  personal  footing,  was  in  conver- 
sation with  me  in  his  house,  and  the  talk  drifted 
towards  philosophy.     He  asked  me,  ''What  is  the 


42  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

present  tendency  of  philosophy  in  Europe?" 
That  was  rather  a  large  question,  especially  as 
I  had  to  answer  it  in  Arabic,  and  I  was  afraid  that 
I  might  use  terms  which  would  mislead  him.  I 
ventured,  however,  to  tell  him  that  I  thought 
that  the  tendency  in  Europe  was  distinctly  towards 
an  idealistic  position.  But  how  was  I  to  express 
"idealistic  position"?  I  used  the  term  Suflism, 
but  went  on  to  guard  myself  by  explaining  that  I 
did  not  use  it  in  the  Muslim  sense  but  in  the  sense 
in  which  it  might  have  been  employed  by  Plato. 
He  nodded  his  head  very  approvingly,  and  said 
that  he  had  no  idea  there  was  so  much  right 
philosophical  feeling  left  in  Europe.  Evidently 
what  I  had  said  took  more  or  less  of  a  load  from 
his  mind.  These  people,  he  thought,  are  not 
so  much  left  to  themselves  after  all.  So,  at 
every  turn,  if  you  get  into  any  real  contact  with 
the  religious  minded  Muslim,  you  will  meet  with 
the  feeling  that  religion  is  of  Islam  and  not 
of  the  outside  world. 

Let  me  take  one  other  aspect  of  Islam.  For 
it  I  ask  you  to  go  with  me  to  Cairo,  to  the  wind- 
swept, bird-haunted  mosque  of  Ibn  Tulian.  That 
mosque,  as  it  stands  at  present,  is  probably  the 


THE    MUSLIM    EAST  43 

oldest  left  in  Egypt,  and  one  of  the  oldest  in  the 
Muslim  world.  It  is  a  great  square  courtyard 
surrounded  by  deep  colonnades  and  has  not,  for 
many  generations,  been  used  for  worship.  Now, 
when  you  enter  it,  all  that  you  find  of  signs  of  life 
are  the  foot-prints  of  birds  marked  in  the  soft, 
fine  sand  that  covers  all  the  courtyard  and  their 
cries  as  they  hover  and  dart  overhead.  The 
roar  of  the  city .  without  dies  away ;  within  is 
silence.  There  it  lies  in  the  midst  of  Cairo, 
abandoned,  full  of  crumbling  memories,  a  monu- 
ment of  the  past  to  the  grandeur  of  those  who 
built  it.  In  its  prayer-niche,  towards  which  dur- 
ing centuries  millions  of  the  faithful  must  have 
bowed  in  the  worship  of  Allah,  I  found  some 
Arabic  verses  which  had  been  written  in  pencil 
in  1877,  t)y  a  certain  Darwish  Mustafa.  They 
are  deeply  significant  for  the  attitude  of  Islam 

to  the  world  and  to  Allah.     They  run  as  follows : 

Where  are  the  kings  and  those  who  peopled  the  earth? 

They  have  left  what  they  built  in  it  and  what  they 
peopled. 

And  have  become  a  pledge  of  the  grave  for  that  which 
they    wrought. 

They  have  turned  to  decayed  bones  in  it,  after  they 
had   been   forgotten. 

Where  are  their  armies  which  repelled  not  and  availed 
not? 


44  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

And  where  is  that  which  they  gathered  in  the  earth 
and  that  which  they  treasured? 

There  came  to  them  the  command  of  the  Lord  of  the 
Throne  in  haste, 

And  there  availed  them  from  it  neither  weahh  nor 
fortress.^ 

Such  is  the  burden  of  all  Muslim  thought. 
One  generation  cometh  and  another  goeth;  but 
Allah  abideth  for  ever.  Nothing  else  is  sure; 
nothing  else  permanent.  "Oh,  where  are  kings 
and  empires  now?"  is  ever  recurring  on  Muslim 
lips;  but  those  other  lines  which  mean  so  much 
to  Christendom,  ''But,  Lord,  thy  Church  is  pray- 
ing yet,  To  endless  years  the  same,"  could  be 
repeated  by  Muslims,  if  at  all,  only  with  grave 
differences  of  meaning.  The  conception  of  the 
Church  Militant,  a  Church  in  travail,  labouring, 
striving  for  an  unaccomplished  ideal,  is  foreign 
to  all  Islam.  The  Muslim  world  is  the  Muslim 
Church,  not  any  encircling  mass  to  be  leavened 
and  conquered  by  that  Church,  then  to  abide  as  a 
Church  Triumphant.  That  world  and  Church, 
rather,  are  fleeting,  evanescent,  a  mere  shadow- 
show   cast  upon  the  screen  of  existence,   while 

*I  do  not  know  who  was  the  author  of  these  lines. 
They  are  quoted  also  in  The  Arabian  Nights,  I  Bulaq 
Ed.,  Vol.  ii.  p.  45 ;  see,  too,  Lane's  Arabian  Nights,  Vol.  iii, 
p.  127. 


THE    MUSLIM    EAST  45 

Allah  is  the  only  reality.  God  has  not  taber- 
nacled in  human  flesh  for  Muslims,  nor  does  He 
as  the  Holy  Ghost  still  dwell  in  men  and  thus 
make  them  partakers  of  the  divine  nature.  They 
remain  his  creatures  always,  of  a  dependent  exist- 
ence, to  be  swept,  in  the  end,  from  the  board  of 
life.  It  came  easily,  therefore,  to  some  Muslim 
sects  to  teach  that  at  the  last  heaven  and  hell 
with  their  dwellers  would  be  destroyed  and  Allah 
would  remain  enthroned  alone,  even  as  He  had 
been  in  the  beginning. 

Here,  perhaps,  we  find  the  absolute,  the  essen- 
tial  difference  between   Islam  and   ChristianityH 


LECTURE  II 

THE  PERSON  AND  LIFE  OF  MUHAMMAD 

As  in  the  case  of  any  historical  question,  you 
must  divide  the  consideration  of  the  person  and 
life  of  Muhammad  under  two  aspects.  First, 
what  really  was  that  life;  what  really  was  that 
person  and  that  individuality?  Secondly,  what 
did  people  come  in  time  to  think  of  them,  and 
what  do  they  think  of  them  now? 

Even  Muslims,  in  their  religious  research,  Have 
realized  the  necessity  of  reaching  again  the  histor- 
ical facts  in  the  case.  There  was,  for  instance, 
a  distinct  tendency  in  one  part  of  the  Muslim 
Church — the  reforming,  or,  in  a  sense.  Puritanic 
part — to  keep  labouring  to  return  to  the  faith  of 
Muhammad  himself,  as  distinguished  from  later 
theories  and  accretions.  So  far  back,  for  in- 
stance, as  the  life  and  work  of  Ibn  Taymiya,  a 
theologian  who  died  in  A.  D.  1328  (A.  H.  726), 
we  find  this  tendency  appearing  strongly,  and 
he  was  simply  a  prominent  carrier-on  of  the  atti- 
tude of  the  Hanbalite,  the  irreconcilable  school. 

46 


PERSON  AND   LIFE  OF    MUHAMMAD  47 

In  the  latter  part  of  the  eighteenth  and  early  part 
of  the  nineteenth  centuries,  the  same  drift  was 
represented  by  the  Wahhabite  movement,  which 
threatened  at  one  time  to  spread  over  and  affect 
the  whole  Muslim  world.  At  the  present  day, 
this  tendency  is  not  guided  so  much  by  the  old 
Puritanic  and  Hanbalite  principles  as  it  is  by  the 
penetration  of  modern  thought  into  some  part, 
at  least,  of  Muslim  life. 

But  to  bring  home  to  you  the  necessity  of  thus 
dividing  our  study  of  the  life  and  person  of 
Muhammad,  and  to  show  how  intimately  this 
tendency  towards  criticism  of  Islam  as  it  devel- 
oped is  working  in  some  elements  of  the  Muslim 
mind,  let  me  describe  to  you  a  scene  in  Cairo  at 
which  I  was  present.  It  was  the  day  of  what  is 
called,  commonly  but  absurdly,  the  Procession 
of  the  Holy  Carpet.  It  is  really  a  procession 
in  which  the  kiswa,  that  is  ''robe,"  the  covering 
of  the  Ka'ba  is  carried  from  the  place  where 
it  has  been  manufactured  and  embroidered,  to 
the  holiest  mosque  in  Cairo,  the  mosque  of  the 
Hasanen,  there  to  be  sewed  together  and  packed 
into  the  boxes  in  which  it  is  to  be  conveyed  to 
Mecca.     The  day  of  this  procession  is  one  of  the 


48  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

great  days  of  religious  Cairo.  I  was  privileged 
to  see  it  from  the  balcony  of  a  native  school  that 
looked  out  on  the  corner  of  two  streets;  in  one 
direction  we  looked  down  the  street  through 
which  the  procession  came ;  in  the  other  down  the 
street  to  that  very  sacred  mosque  of  the  Hasanen 
itself.  The  first  thing  that  came  to  my  ears  was 
the  strange  though  familiar  skirl  of  the  bagpipes, 
and  I  wondered  for  a  moment  if  it  were  possible 
that  the  English  control  had  found  it  advisable 
to  guard  the  route  with  a  detail  from  one  of 
the  Highland  regiments.  But  that  was  only  a 
deception  of  the  moment.  I  soon  saw  that  these 
were  native  Egyptian  troops  and  that  this  was 
only  another  instance  of  the  Western  invasion 
of  Eastern  lands.  The  bagpipes  of  the  Scottish 
clans  have  come  to  their  own ;  the  East  has  fallen 
in  love  with  them;  and  they  shriek  at  the  head 
even  of  circumcision  processions  in  the  streets 
of  Cairo.  So  the  tune  these  bagpipes  were  play- 
ing was  not  "Lochaber  No  More"  or  even  "The 
Barren  Rocks  of  Aden,"  but  some  strange 
Egyptian  melody.  Down  the  street,  then,  came 
the  kiszva,  carried  on  wooden  frames  to  show 
its  embroidery  of  rich  gold  flashing  in  the  sun- 


PERSON  AND   LIFE  OF   MUHAMMAD  49 

light,  and  with  it  and  after  it  trooped  a  motley 
procession  of  darwishes  of  all  the  different  frater- 
nities of  Egypt,  the  Qadirites,  the  Rifa'ites,  the 
Ahmadites,  the  Burhamites,  the  SaMites,  all 
carrying  banners  of  their  own  colours,  beating 
little  drums  and  chanting  their  distinctive  litanies. 
As  they  went  by,  the  air  was  charged  with  emo- 
tional electricity;  all  nerves  were  a-quiver  and 
ready  to  leap  to  a  signal.  Here,  as  time  and 
again  thereafter  at  Muslim  religious  scenes,  I 
felt  the  grip  of  the  will  of  the  crowd,  and  knew 
practically  how  slight  a  touch  may  turn  and 
sweep  a  great  concourse  into  a  simultaneous 
brain-storm. 

But  there  was  another  and  more  immediately 
surrounding  atmosphere  of  cool  criticism  and 
scepticism,  and  it  was  that,  strangely  enough, 
of  the  little  Muslim  group  round  me,  on  the 
balcony.  It  met  me  thus.  I  have  always  had 
a  great  deal  of  interest  in  the  history  and  usages 
of  the  different  fraternities  of  darwishes;  for 
emotional  religion  in  all  its  phases,  eastern  and 
western,  has  always  attracted  me.  On  this  occa- 
sion, I  am  afraid,  I  scandalized  my  sober-minded, 
broad  church   Muslim   friends  by  asking  many 

4 


50  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

things  about  these  darwishes  and  their  ways  and 
the  things  they  were  doing.  Especially  did  I 
scandalize  them  when  I  showed  an  interest  in 
one  man  who  was  carrying  a  banner,  and  who — 
really  or  feignedly — was  borne  away  by  the  force 
of  his  religious  excitement  and  had  fallen  into 
a  kind  of  fit.  He  was  being  carried  along  by 
some  of  his  companions,  jerking  his  limbs  and 
rolling  his  head.  At  that  my  Muslim  friends 
became  very  grave,  and  had  I  known  no  Arabic 
at  all  there  was  one  phrase  that  I  certainly  would 
have  learned  in  that  forenoon,  Laysa  mm  ad-dm. 
I  was  told  that  again  and  again.  It  means,  *lt 
is  not  part  of  the  Faith.'' 

You  see,  then,  the  position  held  by  the  more 
intelligent  and  better  educated  Muslim  who  has 
had  some  contact  with  the  outside  world,  and 
who  feels  the  necessity  of  protecting  his  religion 
against  false  or  one-sided  criticism  from  non- 
Muslims.  Those  around  me  on  the  balcony  were 
very  much  afraid,  evidently,  that  I  should  gather 
a  false  opinion  of  the  real  Islam — as  they  under- 
stood it — from  the  scene  going  on  in  the  street 
below.  My  attitude,  of  course,  was  quite  differ- 
ent from  theirs.     I  was  not  so  much  interested 


PERSON  AND  LIFE  OF   MUHAMMAD  5 1 

just  then  in  reaching  a  conception  of  the  essence 
of  Islam,  as  I  was  in  seeing  what  Islam  had 
become  as  it  had  worked  Itself  out,  what  were  the 
actual  facts  of  today  In  the  Muslim  masses.  For 
of  course  you  will  remember  that  these  darwishes, 
processioning  and  chanting  below,  were  in  great 
part  drawn  from  the  working  classes  of  Cairo 
and  represented  the  religious-minded  uneducated 
people.  It  is,  then,  of  the  very  first  importance, 
as  you  may  easily  see,  that  the  missionary  should 
have  a  grasp  of  those  different  attitudes  towards 
and  understandings  of  Islam,  those  of  the  unedu- 
cated religious  public  and  those  of  the  educated 
few,  who  are  trying  to  purify  their  faith  from 
superstitious  accretion;  that  he  should  always 
be  able  to  realize  what  Muhammad  must  have 
been  himself,  as  he  lived  among  his  fellows,  first 
as  a  citizen  of  Mecca  and  thereafter  as  a  ruler 
in  Medina  and  what  after  ages  have  made  him. 
Let  us  take  up,  first,  the  historical  Muhammad. 
It  is  hard  for  Muslims,  with  all  desire  to  rid 
Islam  either  of  what  they  believe  to  be  sprung 
of  superstition  or  of  what  they  feel  to  be  elements 
exposing  it  to  derision  amongst  non-Muslims — 
it  is  hard   for  them  to  develop  and  retain  an 


52  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

historical  sense.  In  spite  of  their  iron  industry, 
in  spite  of  the  elaborate,  critical  methods  which 
they  have  built  up,  almost  never  do  we  find 
among  them  men  with  a  genuine  historical  sense ; 
certainly  such  men  could  be  counted  upon  one 
hand. 

Let'  me  illustrate  this.  Suppose  that  there 
have  come  down  to  us  a  number  of  traditions 
with  regard  to  any  episode  in  the  life  of  Muham- 
mad. We  wish  to  get  at  the  truth  in  the  case. 
We  know  that  the  great  majority  of  those  tradi- 
tions are  forged;  the  Muslim,  too,  is  prepared 
to  admit  that  a  considerable  proportion  of  them 
are  forged.  I  think  that,  in  all  probability, 
what  we  would  do,  in  such  a  case,  would  be  to 
try  to  consider  those  traditions  as  a  whole,  and 
build  up  from  them  a  picture.  We  would  lay 
them  side  by  side;  see  which  fitted  together;  which 
agreed ;  which  seemed  to  adjust  themselves  to  the 
picture  of  the  whole;  which  could  be  explained 
as  rising  out  of  others;  which  seemed  p.'ycho- 
logically  impossible;  which  could  not  have  been 
invented  later;  which  spoke  clearly  of  later  con- 
troversy. That  is  the  method,  I  fancy,  that  would 
be  followed  by  Western  historians. 


PERSON  AND  LIFE  OF   MUHAMMAD  53 

But   what   does   the   Mushm?     He   examines 
very  carefully  what  he  calls  the  isnad,  the  chain 
of  testimony  that  carries  the  tradition  back  to 
its  original  speaker.     .With  each  tradition  there 
comes  the  list  of  the  men  who  have  passed  it 
along  from  lips  to  ear,  lips  to  ear,  straight  down 
to  the  time  when  it  was  finally  fixed  in  book  form. 
He  examines  that  list ;  he  considers  whether  those 
men  were  really  in  contact ;  he  considers  also,  and 
this  is  perhaps  the  one  sound  point  in  his  pro- 
cedure, their  relative  reputation  for  veracity,  and 
out  of  that  process  he  comes  to  a  conclusion  which 
of  the  traditions  should  be  accepted  and  whicH 
should  not.     Now,  I  need  hardly  say  that  by  that 
method,  considering  the  frequency  and  the  ease 
with  which  the  chains  of  traditions  are  forged, 
no  real  historical  result  can  be  reached,  and  yet, 
with   precisely  that   external   testimony,    this   is 
the  way  the  Muslim  historian  goes  to  work.     H 
our  methods  tend  to  subjectivity  run  wild,  theirs 
tend  to  objectivity  without   a  basis.     With  the 
materials  gained  in  that  way  he  thinks  that  he 
can  get  back  to  the  historical  fact.     There  is  also 
a    later,    educated    school    which    is    trying    to 
modernize  Islam  and  make  it  a  possible  faith  for 


54  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

the  world  of  today.  It  does  that  by  rejecting 
everything  in  tradition  which  it  cannot  ration- 
ahze,  and  by  explaining  away  the  passages  in  the 
Qur'an  which  it  cannot  reject.  We  have  known 
the  same  method  applied  to  Christianity;  as 
applied  to  Islam  it  must  in  the  end  be  equally 
unsatisfactory.  Certainly  it  is  quite  unhistorical. 
Joined  to  this  lack  of  historical  sense  as  to 
what  is  really  there,  comes  the  lack  of  a  compara- 

« ^tive  method.  We  are  aided  by  comparison  in  a 
great   many   ways  when  we   try   to   understand 

•.  the  beginnings  of  Islam.  We  have,  for  example, 
although  this  has  not  been  applied  so  much  as  it 
might  have  been,  the  parallel  or  strongly  similar 
development  of  prophetism  in  the  Old  Testament. 
But  that,  of  course,  except  as  it  has  reached  them 
by  strange,  misleading  paths,  which  I  shall  de- 
scribe in  a  later  lecture,  is  absolutely  sealed 
and  unknown  to  the  Muslims.  We  can  also 
compare  early  Muslim  religious  words  and 
phrases  with  their  cognates  and  parallels  in  the 
other  Semitic  languages,  and  frequently  In  this 
way  find  their  origins.  We  can  tell  what  words 
and  Ideas  Muhammad  drew  from  Abyssinian 
Christianity,  from  South  Arabia,  Christian  and 


PERSON   AND   LIFE  OF    MUHAMMAD  55 

Zoroastrian,     from    the    Hebrew    and    Aramaic 
vocabulary  of  the  Jewish  tribes  of  Arabia. 

I  remember  one  very  interesting  talk  I  had 
with  a  Muslim  scholar  in  which  I  laid  before 
him  in  the  original  characters  and  in  Arabic 
transliteration  the  different  cognates  of  the  word 
Allah  in  all  the  Semitic  languages  I  knew.  It 
was  all  absolutely  new  to  him ;  he  had  never  seen 
such  things  before,  although  he  was  a  man  of 
great  learning,  and  he  evidently  found  it  curi- 
ous— interesting,  perhaps,  so  far  as  the  Muslim 
understands  what  interesting  is;  but  instead  of 
leading  his  mind  to  any  historical  comparisons, 
or  raising  problems  of  relationship,  it  brought 
from  him  only  the  thought  that  Allah  is  the  same 
everywhere,  that  all  peoples,  in  a  sense,  were 
called  by  His  name — a  significant  and  noble 
thought,  but  not  an  historical  one. 

Again,  there  is  another  source  which  is  open  to 
us  and  which  has,  with  one  exception,  I  believe, 
been  entirely  neglected  by  Muslims.  It  is  the 
study  of  the  parallels  which  appear  in  the  casei 
of  what  we  call  now-a-days  trance-mediums;  the\  3 
phenomena  exhibited  by  those  mediums  who  enter 
a  trance,  speak  in  that  trance,  and  give  signs  in 


56  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

one  way  or  another  while  in  a  hypnotic  state. 
In  such  cases,  I  have  no  question,  is  really  to  be 
found  the  clue  to  Muhammad;  but  that  method, 
except,  as  I  have  said,  by  one  man,  has  been 
left  unused  by  Muslims.  In  these  ways,  there- 
fore, it  is  possible  for  us  to  attack  the  problem 
of  the  real  Muhammad  in  a  way  that  is  not 
possible  for  the  Muslims  themselves. 

But  we  begin  by  asking,  What  were  the  out- 
standing elements  In  the  Arabia  of  Muhammad's 
own  time,  the  elements  that  made  him  possible, 
the  environment  which  conditioned  him?  One 
of  them  was  that  for  about  one  hundred  years 
before  his  time  and  for  some  little  time  after  him, 
Arabia  had  been  passing  through  what  can  be 
described  only  as  a  great  literary  renaissance. 
It  was  not  only  a  great  renaissance  for  Arabia, 
a  great  outburst  of  ideas  and  a  great  blossoming 
of  Arabian  poetry ;  but  it  must  be  reckoned,  when 
we  consider  the  quality  of  the  poetry  produced 
and  its  effects  upon  after  history,  one  of  the  great 
literary  blossoming  times  of  the  world.  Of 
course  the  poetry  that  came  forth  then  was  not 
of  the  character,  perhaps,  to  appeal  to  us  very 
closely;  it  is  all  of  the  tolerably  uniform  type; 


PERSON  AND  LIFE  OF   MUHAMMAD  57 

the  forms  it  assumes  have  a  sameness;  the  ideas 
that  appear  in  it  repeat  themselves  again  and 
again;  but,  besides  that  and  along  with  that,  we 
have  the  fact  that  in  the  Arabia  of  a  century 
before  and  half  a  century  after  Muhammad  there 
did  appear  a  long  succession  of  great  poets. 

Then,  parallel  with  this — naturally  connected 
with  this,  I  presume — there  was  a  growing  sense 
of  nationality.  For  long  the  Arab  tribes,  limited 
on  one  side  by  Byzantium  and  on  the  other  by 
Persia,  had  been  swept  back  and  cooped  up  within 
their  borders.  Thus  the  distinction  of  Arab 
and  non-Arab  had  been  forcibly  impressed  upon 
them,  and  they  had  been  driven  to  recognize  that 
they  were  all  Arabs;  that  they  were  really  one 
people.  From  time  to  time,  at  long  intervals, 
that  has  happened  in  Arabia.  But  it  has  never 
lasted  any  length  of  time.  The  Arabs  have 
always  fallen  back  again  into  their  apparently 
natural  state  of  inter-tribal  warfare.  Then,  how- 
ever, and  for  a  short  time,  such  a  condition  was 
reached. 

Again,  the  population  of  Arabia  had  evidently 
been  growing  for  a  considerable  time  beyond  its 
possibilities  of  support.    The  period  was  drawing 


58  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

near  when  Arabia  must,  in  a  sense,  pour  over 
its  frontier;  must  throw  part  of  its  population 
on  the  adjacent  lands.  Its  population  lives  nor- 
mally close  to  starvation  point;  but  at  intervals 
of  some  hundreds  of  years  there  come  regularly 
periods  when  the  population  passes  that  starva- 
tion point  and  some  relief  must  be  found.  One 
of  those  previous  periods — perhaps  the  most 
important  of  all  for  the  history  of  Arabia,  cer- 
tainly for  the  history  of  the  world — was  that 
when  the  tribes  of  the  Hebrews  were  thrown 
out  in  a  similar  fashion  and  compelled  by  the 
necessities  of  the  case  to  occupy  Canaan.  It  was 
evident  about  the  birth  of  Muhammad  that  such 
a  time  was  again  coming. 

And  again,  and  lastly,  though  perhaps  most 
important  of  all,  Arabia  was  passing  through 
a  period  of  religious  unrest.  What  precisely 
had  led  to  this  we  do  not  know.  Whether  there 
had  really  been  an  influence  working  from  Chris- 
tianity upon  the  heathen  tribes,  or  whether  it 
came  from  within  out  of  their  own  primitive 
religion  itself,  that  is  absolutely  dark  to  us;  but 
the  fact  is  that  the  literary  renaissance  of  which 
I  have  spoken  was  accompanied  by  a  marked 


PERSON  AND  LIFE  OF   MUHAMMAD  59 

revival  of  religious  feeling,  by  a  recognition  that 
there  is  something  more  in  life  than  simply  the 
production  of  beautiful  poems.  Again  and  again 
in  the  thoughts  of  these  poets  there  emerges,  as 
it  were,  an  echo  from  Ecclesiastes ;  the  feeling 
of  the  passing  generations  revolving  with  the 
stars  and  all  going  down  into  the  one  place,  and 
that  place  what  man  knows?  the  absolute  cer- 
tainty, too,  that  there  must  be  some  force,  some 
personality,  hidden  behind  the  dark  phenomena 
of  life. 

Into  such  a  world,  then,  Muhammaa  was  born. 
In  these  lectures  it  is  not  my  intention  to  go  Into 
history  in  the  usual  sense,  the  history  of  dates 
and  supposedly  hard  facts.  I  desire,  rather,  to 
gives  attitudes  and  aspects,  the  atmosphere  and 
point  of  departure  for  future  study.  So  all  that 
I  will  say  here  is  that,  probably,  Muhammad 
was  born  about  A.  D.  570;  that,  possibly,  he 
began  his  mission  as  a  prophet  in  610;  that  he 
was  compelled  to  retire  from  Mecca  to  the  neigh- 
boring city  of  Medina  In  622,  the  date  of  the 
Hijra,  the  Muslim  era;  and  that  he  died  in  the 
year  of  the  Hijra  11. 

These  are  the  main  fixed  points  of  the  life  of 


60  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

Muhammad;  not  all  very  irrevocably  fixed.  But 
what  of  Muhammad  himself?  Is  it  possible  tc 
express  him  in  his  essential  personality  and  char- 
acter with  certainty  in  a  word  ?  I  think  that  it  is. 
If  there  is  one  thing  that  is  certain  about  him, 
his  character,  his  personality,  it  is  that  he  was 
essentially  a  pathological  case.  But  for  that 
fate,  he,  too,  might  have  been  one  of  the  great 
poets  of  the  Arabian  renaissance.  As  it  is,  you 
might  describe  him  as  a  poet  manque.  He  was 
spoiled  for  poetry  by  his  prophetship  in  much 
the  same  way — dare  I  say  it  before  a  New  Eng- 
land audience? — that  Emerson  was  spoiled  for 
poetry  by  his  philosophy. 

He  was  early  left  an  orphan,  and  had  to  find 
his  own  way  through  the  world.  That  way  was 
evidently  a  hard  one.  It  left  in  him  a  sense  of 
wrong,  a  sense  that  the  world  is  a  cruel  world 
for  those  who  cannot  protect  or  take  care  of 
themselves.  This  developed  in  two  ways.  It 
developed,  on  the  one  hand,  into  a  strong  sense 
of  the  evil  of  the  world,  and,  on  the  other  hand, 
into  a  strong  feeling  that  in  any  religion  great 
stress  must  be  laid  upon  the  helping  of  the  poor, 
the   oppressed,    the    orphan,   the    widow.      This 


PERSON  AND  LIFE  OF   MUHAMMAD  6l 

sense  of  evil  in  the  world  is  rather  difficult  to 
distinguish  because  It  does  not  seem  to  have 
struck  him  so  much  in  the  form  of  a  personal 
sense  of  sin — although  traditions  have  come  down 
that  speak  somewhat  in  those  terms — but  it  is 
rather  a  sense  of  the  world  as  a  whole  being 
wrong  before  God ;  of  the  whole  race  of  mankind 
needing  help,  needing  grace,  needing  acceptance 
at  the  hand  of  God.  It  is  very  strange  that  with 
this  feeling  of  his  there  has  grown  up  in  Islam 
absolutely  no  doctrine  of  what  we  would  call 
original  sin.  The  Muslim  knows  what  we  call 
the  Fall,  he  knows  about  the  Garden,  and  the 
eating  from  the  tree  and  the  expulsion.  But 
the  Fall,  for  him,  so  far  as  there  was  one,  was  a 
strictly  literal  fall  from  the  Earthly  Paradise  on 
the  top  of  a  mountain.  Of  a  fall  in  the  sense  of 
an  entering  into  a  sinful  state  the  Muslim  knows 
nothing.  Of  course,  it  is  true  that  the  Old  Testa- 
ment knows  nearly  as  little  of  anything  of  the 
kind.  After  the  narrative  in  Genesis,  the  only 
reference  to  the  story  of  the  Fall  is  a  very  obscure 
one  in  Ecclesiastes.  For  the  Old  Testament  in 
general  man  is  sinful  because  he  is  a  creature 
of  flesh  and  therefore  unclean.     But  the  Pauline 


62  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

doctrine  of  the  Fall  had  developed  in  the  interval, 
yet  had  left  no  trace  on  Muhammad.  Whatever 
Christian  influence  worked  upon  him  had  not 
conveyed  it. 

For  Muhammad,  then,  this  sense  of  evil  was 
overwhelming.  The  invisible  world,  the  awful 
thing  lying  behind  this  world  that  we  look  out 
upon,  which  conditions  it  and  works  in  and 
through  it,  was  very  dreadfully  near.  At  every 
turn  he  felt  what  has  been  so  well  put  as  "a  sense 
of  the  wrath  to  come." 

Now,  two  things  seem  especially  to  have  stim- 
ulated and  pointed  this  feeling  and  developed  this 
side  of  his  character.  The  one  was  what  he  saw 
and  learned  from  the  many  Christian  hermits 
whom  he  found  scattered  through  the  Syrian 
desert.  It  is  a  commonplace  in  the  poetry  of  the 
time  to  find  allusions  to  the  life  of  the  solitary 
hermit  in  the  vast  spaces  of  the  desert,  and  evi- 
dently just  as  these  hermits  had  left  a  picturesque 
impression  upon  the  poets  of  the  time,  they  had 
made  a  religious  impression  upon  Muhammad. 
Their  prayers,  their  night  watchings,  their  fast- 
ings, their  scourgings  had  touched  his  heart, 
even  as  their  solitary  lamps  shining  through  the 


PERSON   AND   LIFE  OF    MUHAMMAD  63 

darkness  of  the  desert  and  the  mountain  soHtudes 
had  caught  the  imagination  of  the  poets. 

Another  thing  that  affected  him,  and  that  per- 
haps even  more  strongly,  was  the  multitude  of 
rock-hewn  caves  that  lie  along  the  caravan  route 
which  stretches  up  from  Mecca  and  Medina  into 
Syria  proper.  Now  we  know  what  those  rock- 
caves  are.  They  are  the  tombs  of  the  Aramean 
and  Nabatean  trading-colonies  which  at  one  time 
held  the  route  from  Syria  down  the  coast  of  the 
Red  Sea  to  Yemen.  But  somehow  Muhammad 
with  his  vivid  imagination  and  morbid  fancy  saw 
in  these  all  that  was  left  of  the  dwellings  of  long 
bygone  tribes  who  had  done  evil  on  earth  and 
had  been  struck  down  for  it  by  the  hand  of  God. 
There  their  remains  still  lay,  in  their  houses  where 
the  hand  of  God  had  touched  them;  and  before 
that  hand  of  God  he  trembled.  Of  course,  in  the 
time  to  come,  these  judgments  of  God  developed 
for  him  into  a  definite  Day  of  Judgment ;  but  so 
far,  these  ideas  were  simply  working  in  his  mind ; 
that  was  all  the  distance  he  had  reached. 

As  I  have  said  before,  the  fundamental  thing  In 
him  was  that  he  was  a  pathological  case.  It  is 
evident  that,  from  comparatively  early  days,  he 


64  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

had  trances;  fell  into  fits  in  which  he  saw  and 
heard  strange  things.  There  came  to  him  voices, 
either,  apparently,  in  a  trance  condition  or  when 
he  was  awake.  Driven  by  fear  for  his  soul,  he 
had  got  Into  the  habit  of  retiring  into  desert 
recesses  and  there  spending  days  in  solitary 
prayer.  So  there  the  voices  came  to  him;  there 
he  even  saw  figures — vague,  dim — and  the  fear 
fell  upon  him,  "What  are  they?  What  is  the 
matter  with  me?  Is  this  of  God?  Or  am  I 
possessed  by  some  spirit  ?"  Now,  the  conception 
of  possession  by  a  spirit  was  a  high  possibility. 
Indeed,  Muhammad  was  thus  explained,  at  first, 
by  the  people  around  him  as  possessed  by  one 
of  the  jinn,  the  genii  of  the  Arabian  Nights  of  our 
childhood.  When  a  soothsayer  was  called  upon 
to  tell  where  some  stolen  or  lost  thing  was ;  where 
some  stray  beast  had  wandered;  or  what  was 
going  to  be  the  outcome  of  some  enterprise,  it 
was  one  of  the  jinn  that  entered  into  the  sooth- 
sayer, possessed  him  and  spoke  through  him. 
The  idea  lay  very  near  Muhammad,  then,  that 
he  might  be  possessed  In  the  same  way  by  some 
spirit  or  other,   probably  evil. 

But  we   find   that  he   gradually   reached   the 


PERSON  AND   LIFE  OF   MUHAMMAD  65 

belief  that  what  was  in  him  was  not  an  evil  spirit. 
How  that  came  about  is  still  obscure  to  us  and 
I  do  not  suppose  that  it  will  ever  become  per- 
fectly clear.  But  we  do  find  him  arrived  at  the 
point  where  he  judges  that,  instead  of  being 
possessed  by  one  of  the  jinn,  he  is — and  this  is 
the  great  fact — in  the  line  of  the  inheritance  of 
the  Old  Testament  prophets.  What  is  supposed 
to  be,  what  traditionally,  at  least,  is  said  to  be 
the  first  revelation  to  him  runs  in  almost  the  same 
words  as  the  words  of  Isaiah :  "The  voice  said, 
^Cry !'  and  I  said,  What  shall  I  cry  ?'  "  So  there 
came  to  Muhammad  the  angel  messenger  telling 
him  ''Cry!"  and  he  said,  "I  cannot  cry!"^  I 
cannot  but  believe  that  here  we  have  a  case  of 
the  re-appearance  on  the  lips  of  Muhammad,  in 
perfectly  unconscious  fashion,  of  some  phrase 
which  his  sub-memory  had  picked  up  when  he 
was  in  a  Christian  church,  which  he  had  heard 
read  at  a  Christian  service.  There  are  many 
phrases  in  the  Qur'an  which  suggest  that  he 
must  have  had  some  such  experiences.     At  any 

*  Qur.  xcvl  and  Bukhari's  Sahih,  Book  of  the  Beginning 
of  Revelation;  Isaiah  xl,  6  and  compare  Ixx  and  Vulgate 
readings. 

5 


66  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

rate,  to  him  there  comes  at  last  a  certainty  that 
it  is  not  one  of  the  jinn  that  has  spoken  to  him; 
but  that  he  is  a  successor  of  the  long  line  of 
prophets. 

Yet  I  do  not  mean  by  that  that  he  had  any 
very  clear  conception  of  what  being  an  Old  Testa- 
ment prophet  meant.  He  knew  that  the  Jews 
and  Christians  had  their  sacred  books  and  that 
they  looked  back  upon  an  ordered  series  of 
prophets,  one  following  another.  What  his  mind 
then  did  w^as  this.  These  scattered  fragments 
that  he  had  picked  up  of  the  history  of  the  Old 
Testament  he  proceeded  to  weave  together  into 
a  whole.  To  these,  too,  he  made  additions. 
It  is  evident  that  in  his  time  there  were  traditions 
of  prophets  who  had  come  to  the  Arabs  them- 
selves. These  he  wove  together  with  the  stories 
of  the  Old  Testament  in  strange,  broken  frag- 
ments and  confused,  anachronistic  order,  and 
made  them  into  what  has  since  become  to  the 
Muslim  Church  its  canonical  history  of  revelation. 

But  there  w^as  another  side.  While  he  went 
thus  to  work,  following  blind  ideas  and  broken 
recollections,  with  no  real  historical  method,  on 
another  side  he  was  truly  in  the  succession  of 


PERSON  AND  LIFE  OF   MUHAMMAD  (i*J 

the  Old  Testament  prophets.  He  was  certainly 
no  advance  upon  them.  No  one  could  dream  of 
comparing  him  personally  or  his  religious  and 
moral  ideas  with  Amos,  Hosea  or  Isaiah  and  their 
ideas.  But  he  sprang,  as  they  did,  from  the  soil 
of  Semitic  prophetism.  His  origin  went  back, 
as  their  origins  went  back,  to  the  soothsaying 
prophet  that  we  know  in  the  Old  Testament,  the 
prophet  who  tells  where  a  stray  beast  is,  or  a 
stolen  thing  is,  and  who  heals  and  helps  in  so 
many  different  ways.  Such  existed,  we  know, 
amongst  the  Hebrews ;  they  existed,  too,  amongst 
the  Arabs  of  Muhammad's  time. 

In  regard  to  these  soothsaying  and  very  minor 
prophets  and  their  methods,  there  has  come  down 
to  us  a  very  singular  little  group  of  traditions 
that  throws  a  brilliant  light  upon  the  phenomena 
of  Muhammad  himself.  During  his  later  life 
in  Medina  he  discovered  that  there  was  a  Jewish 
boy  of  some  thirteen  or  fourteen  years  of  age  who 
exhibited  the  same  trance  phenomena  that  he 
himself  did,  and  who  gave  out  utterances  in 
trance  in  what  Muhammad  recognized  were 
exactly  the  same  ways,  conditions,  forms  that  he 
himself  used.     He   found  that  there  was   even 


68  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

growing  up  a  tale  that  thi^  boy  was  a  prophet  to 
the  Jews  as  opposed  to  him  himself,  the  prophet 
to  the  Arabs.  There  was  even  danger  that  he 
might  be  used  as  a  weapon  against  Muhammad. 
So  it  is  an  interesting  story  which  the  traditions 
tell  of  how  Muhammad  went  to  work  to  investi- 
gate this  boy. 

In  the  records  of  the  Society  for  Psychical 
Research  we  have  many  tales  of  the  investigation 
and  exposure  of  the  methods  of  different  medi- 
ums; but  I  believe  it  is  somew^hat  rare  to 
have  one  prophet  investigating,  strictly  accord- 
ing to  the  methods  of  that  society,  another 
prophet.  Yet  that  is  precisely  what  we  find  here. 
Muhammad  s^t  to  work,  as  you  might  say,  to 
stalk  this  boy,  to  follow  him  about;  he  tried  to 
catch  him  when  he  was  in  the  process  of  trance 
and  utterance.  But  he  did  not  get  much  out  of 
it.  His  conclusion  was  that  the  boy  was  harm- 
less and  that  he  had  better  let  him  alone.  The 
interesting  thing  is  that  he  perfectly  clearly  recog- 
nized that  the  phenomena  exhibited  by  that  boy 
were  the  same  as  his  own,  and  that  he  did 
not  like  the  comparison. 

But  to  return,   Muhammad,  as  I  have  said, 


PERSON   AND  LIFE  OF   MUHAMMAD  69 

placed  himself  in  the  succession  of  the  Old  Testa;?/ 
ment  prophets.  There  come  in  the  Qur'an  very 
strange  scraps  drawn  from  the  Old  Testament, 
drawn  from  the  New  Testament,  drawn  also, 
so  far  as  I  can  understand  them,  from  different 
Christian  liturgies.  We  have,  for  example, 
*Tight  of  Light" ;  God  'The  Light  of  the  World" 
(Qur.  xxiv,  35) ;  ''Which  proceedeth  from  the 
Father"  (Qur.  xvii,  87).  Even  the  longer  salu- 
tation of  Islam,  "And  upon  thee  be  peace  and  the 
mercy  and  blessing  of  God"  may  be  best  derived 
from  the  solemn  benediction  of  the  Christian 
Church,  as  the  constant  recurrence  of  "The 
Peace'^  in  Islam  has  almost  certainly  that  origin. 
Muhammad's  brain  had  for  long  been  treasuring 
up  such  things;  but  treasuring  them  up  with 
the  most  singular,  most  unparalleled  inaccuracy; 
and  then  making  them  over  with  the  utmost  free- 
dom of  imagination.  Only  in  that  way  can  we 
explain  the  conception  which  he  worked  out  and 
expressed  of  the  Old  and  New  Testaments,  and 
the  form  in  which  his  memories  of  them  were 
cast. 

So  much,  then,  for  Muhammad  upon  that  side. 
But  what  were  his  doctrines;  what  the  positions 


70  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

with  which  in  the  end  he  came  out?  One  of 
them  was,  "There  is  absolutely  in  existence  no 
God  at  all  save  Allah."  That  is  to  say: — The 
Arabs  of  his  day,  the  Arab  tribes  in  general,  had 
reached  what  might  be  described  as  a  modified 
monotheism  with  a  one  God  in  the  background 
and  a  crowd  of  minor  deities,  the  remains  of 
tribal  gods,  coming  in  between  and  supposed  to 
stand  in  some  subsidiary  position  to  the  one  God 
in  the  background.  Muhammad's  great  stroke 
was  to  sweep  out  of  existence  as  gods  all  those 
intermediate  deities  and  to  say  to  the  Meccans, 
'There  is  no  God  at  all  save  that  one  God  whom 
you  already  know  and  recognize  as  Allah."  The 
other  gods  became  for  him  angels,  or  they  fell 
back  into  the  position  of  the  jinn  and  the  devils — 
all  strictly  created  beings,  essentially  different 
in  nature  from  Allah. 

Another  of  the  doctrines  with  which  Muham- 
mad, in  the  end,  came  out  of  the  labyrinth,  was 
that  of  the  Last  Day.  You  remember,  in  my 
first  lecture  when  I  recited  to  you  the  Fdtiha, 
one  curious  phrase  was,  ''The  King  of  the  Day 
of  Doom."  That  conception  always  haunted 
Muhammad.     That  there  was  coming  a  Day  of 


PERSON  AND  LIFE  OF   MUHAMMAD  7I 

Doom  when  all  must  be  judged,  and  that  at 
that  Day  of  Doom  there  would  rule  and  judge — 
Allah.  Few  would  be  saved  then;  but  Muham- 
mad's doctrine  varied  as  to  the  conditions  of 
salvation.  At  one  time,  apparently,  he  was  pre- 
pared to  admit  that  the  followers  of  all  non- 
idolatrous  religions — Jews,  Christians,  Magians — 
would  be  among  the  saved.  Later,  he  narrowed 
this  down  until  those  only  who  had  accepted 
Islam  and  the  Prophet  of  Islam  would  have  a 
chance  there,  and  not  even  all  of  them. 

Another  doctrine,  or  rather  a  moral  attitude 
which  he  practically  exalted  to  the  position  of  a 
religious  dogma,  was  the  duty  of  caring  for  the 
poor  and  the  needy.  You  know,  of  course,  how 
important  a  place  in  the  system  of  Islam  the 
Zakat,  the  tithe  for  the  poor,  has  held,  and  how 
honorably  distinguished  Muslims  have  been  by 
their  personal,  direct  charities.  That  goes  back 
to  Muhammad  and  Muhammad's  own  experi- 
ences when  he  was  one  of  the  poor ;  he  had  been 
needy,  oppressed  and  an  orphan  himself. 

And  last,  we  must  here  include,  if  somewhat 
illogically,  certain  exercises  of  piety  and  devo- 
tion— the  five  daily  prayers  and  the  prayers  of 


'J2  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

supererogation,  the  Fast,  the  Pilgrimage — differ- 
ent observances  but  all  of  the  nature  of  submitting 
the  soul  to  Allah,  bringing  man  into  the  position 
of  giving  over  his  self  and  his  all  entirely  into 
the  guidance  of  Allah.  These  sprang  in  part 
from  Muhammad's  own  devotional  tendencies, 
for  he  v^as  truly  a  devout  soul,  and  in  part  from 
the  necessity  upon  him  of  conciliating  the  Mec- 
cans  by  taking  over  certain  elements  from  their 
former  worship. 

Other  aspects  of  the  faith  of  Muhammad  I 
shall  take  up  in  subsequent  lectures;  but  these 
are  what  belong  peculiarly  and  naturally  to  the 
doctrine  of  his  own  person  and  life. 

But  what  are  we  to  think  of  him  as  he  was  in 
himself?  Always  trying,  as  it  is  my  effort  to 
do  throughout  these  lectures,  to  feel  and  state 
these  matters  sympathetically  from  within,  this 
Is  to  be  said: — Emphatically,  Muhammad  was 
not  in  his  beginnings  a  self-seeking  insincere 
impostor — of  that  we  can  be  assured  as  a  funda- 
mental fact.  He  was  a  pathological  case.  His 
revelations  came  to  him  in  trance  and,  like  all 
trance-mediums,  he  had  strangely  perverted  ideas ; 
but  an  impostor  he  certainly  was  not.     The  mere 


PERSON   AND  LIFE   OF    MUHAMMAD  73 

fact  of  what  he  did ;  the  witness  of  the  men  whom 
he  gathered  about  him;  the  impression  that  he 
made  upon  his  people;  that  he  was  able  to  gain 
the  sword  of  which  we  have  heard  so  much ;  all 
these  things  are  enough  to  show  that  the  man 
was  real.  Browning  says,  "an  unbelieving  Pope 
will  never  do."  I  think  we  may  echo  that  an 
unbelieving  prophet  is  an  unthinkable  thing,  and 
to  my  mind  there  can  be  no  question  that  Muham- 
mad, however  low  he  stood  below  the  level  of  the 
Old  Testament  prophets,  though  he  never  entered 
into  the  air  that  they  breathed,  though  his  ideas 
were  far  from  their  ideas,  still,  having  sprung 
from  the  same  soil,  was  of  their  kind  and  might, 
under  other  conditions,  have  reached  their  height. 
Again,  he  was  not,  as  so  many  have  thought, 
a  schemer,  a  politician,  a  man  who  set  out  to 
unite  Arabia  and  to  become  its  head,  and  who  at 
every  move  knew  exactly  what  he  was  doing 
and  why  he  did  it.  He  was  not  a  schemer;  he 
was  very  often  the  most  unpolitic  of  men.  As 
a  politician,  as  a  strategist,  he  made  mistakes 
right  and  left.  He  was  not  even  a  great  general, 
a  brilliant  leader  In  war.  The  Muslim  armies 
accomplished  little  indeed  so  long  as  they  were 


74  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

led  by  him.  He  was  not  a  clear-headed  man,  least 
of  all  as  to  himself.  He  certainly  had  a  gift 
of  judging  character;  but  he  had  a  still  greater 
gift  of  attaching  men  to  himself.  This  uncon- 
scious personal  influence  accomplished  more  than 
could  any  shrewdness. 

But  do  not  think  that  I,  in  this,  would  slur 
over  in  any  respect  the  last  terrible  ten  years  of 
Muhammad's  life,  when  he  ruled  absolutely  in 
Medina.  I  am  speaking  now  of  what  he  was 
in  the  beginning;  what  he  was  before  temptation 
fell  upon  him  and  he  fell  before  temptation ;  what 
he  was  on  one  side  of  his  character,  even  through 
those  ten  years.  There  can  be  no  shadow  of 
question  that  in  those  last  years  he  forged  the 
awful  machinery  of  divine  inspiration  to  serve 
his  own  ignoble  and  selfish  purposes.  How  he 
passed  over,  at  last,  into  that  turpitude  is  a  prob- 
lem again  for  those  who  have  made  a  study  of 
how  the  most  honest  trance-mediums  may  at  any 
time  begin  to  cheat.  We  know  that  as  a  fact; 
but  the  moral  declension,  the  slope  into  the  abyss 
of  evil,  down  which  Muhammad  so  calmly  walked 
in  those  ten  years,  that  can  never  be  explained 
away. 


PERSON   AND  LIFE  OF   MUHAMMAD  75 

If  we  look  at  him,  further,  on  the  side  of 
philosophy,  his  case  is  equally  strange,  equally 
contradictory.  Again  we  must  go  back  to  our 
clue,  to  the  essentially  pathological  state  of  his 
mind.  He  was  a  dualist  on  one  side  and  at  one 
time  when  the  reality  of  the  world  was  strong 
upon  him.  There  was  Allah ;  there  was  also  the 
world,  Allah's  world,  but  separate.  At  another 
time,  he  seems  to  pass  over  and  become  an  uncon- 
scious monist.  The  fleeting  aspect  of  the  world 
so  impressed  him  that  he  came  very  close  to  say- 
ing that  the  time  would  come  when  all  save 
Allah  would  have  passed  away.  As  it  is,  he 
does  say,  "Allah's  are  the  East  and  the  West; 
wherever  ye  turn,  there  is  the  Visage  of  Allah" 
(Qur.  ii,  109),  and  once  and  again  he  speaks 
of  Allah  as  the  Reality  (al-haqq).  In  truth 
he  could  never  have  framed  a  rounded  system 
or  held  to  it.  As  well  ask  a  popular  preacher 
to  have  a  body  of  divinity  behind  his  sermons. 
The  emotions  and  needs  of  the  moment  were 
more  to  him  than  any  dream  of  consistency. 
His  mind,  on  one  side,  was  of  the  crassest 
concreteness.  He  dealt,  in  the  most  bizarre 
details  of  the  heavens  and  the   earth   and   the 


76  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

abyss  and  all  the  creatures  therein.  Of  the 
masses  of  tradition  telling  of  his  tales  on  these 
matters,  much  must  be  authentic.  For  instance, 
in  the  description  of  the  Night  Journey  from 
Mecca  to  Jerusalem,  and  thence  up  into  the 
heavens  and  even  to  the  Farthest  Lote  Tree,  the 
details  of  those  traditions  must,  to  a  great  extent, 
go  back  to  Muhammad  himself.  His  mind 
rejoiced  in  such  concrete  imaginations,  odd  and 
grotesque  as  they  are  to  us  now.  But,  on  another 
side,  Muhammad  was  a  mystic;  he  was  adrift 
on  the  mystic  sea;  he  could  not  have  compared, 
defined  nor  explained  his  wavering  thoughts. 
These  he  had  to  express  as  they  came,  and  so 
the  two  elements  are  in  his  Qur'an  and  in  the 
records  of  his  talk,  and  in  the  history  of  Islam 
all  down  through  the  generations  these  two 
elements  continued. 

So,  then,  I  take  it  that  the  essential  and  charac- 
teristic elements  in  the  prophetship,  in  the  creed, 
in  the  personality,  in  the  philosophy  of  Muham- 
mad all  lead  us  back  to  something  unhealthy,  un- 
unified ;  but  to  something  also  in  its  earlier  phases 
and  through  the  greater  part  of  its  life  and  growth 
absolutely  sincere — absolutely,  entirely  real. 


LECTURE  III 

THE  QUR'AN;  PRESENT  MUSLIM  ATTITUDE 
TOWARD  MUHAMMAD 

In  my  last  lecture  I  tried  to  put  before  you 
a  sketch  of  the  personality  of  Muhammad,  with 
his  diseased  genius,  his  trances  and  the  visions 
and  the  voices  that  came  to  him  in  those  trances. 
From  it  you  will  see  that  the  question,  What 
is  the  Qur'an?  is  practically  answered. 

The  Qur'an  is  simply  a  collection  of  fragments 
gathered  up  from  those  trance  utterances  of 
Muhammad.  When  we  look  at  it,  as  it  is  in 
itself,  we  find  that  it  is  an  absolute  chaos,  yet 
a  chaos,  curiously  enough,  with  a  mechanical 
arrangement.  In  that  respect  it  is  very  like 
indeed  to  the  Book  of  Amos ;  in  fact,  the  nearest 
parallel,  I  think,  that  can  be  found  for  It  is  that 
book.  There  you  have  a  collection  of  fragmen- 
tary utterances  from  Amos,  gathered  up  after 
his  time,  perhaps  by  one  of  his  disciples,  and 
arranged  by  the  collector  according  to  purely 
mechanical    principles.      So    it    was    with    the 

Qur'an. 

77 


78  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

But  when  we  take  those  fragments;  when  we 
try  to  work  back  from  them  to  Muhammad 
himself — to  the  speaker  of  them — what  do  we 
find?  Perhaps  the  most  starthng  characteristic 
is  an  external  one,  an  enormous  difference  in 
their  length  and  form.  We  find  a  great  many 
of  them  couched  in  short,  broken,  jerky  language, 
and  we  find  a  great  many  others  couched  in  long, 
winding  sentences,  clumsy  and  lumbering  to  the 
last  degree. 

Now,  what  does  that  mean?  This  problem 
the  Muslims  saw  quite  clearly,  and  their  answer 
is  equally  clear  and  to  the  point.  They  laid 
down  the  distinction  that  the  short-sentenced 
utterances  belong  to  Muhammad's  earliest  period, 
while  the  long-sentenced  utterances  belong  to  his 
later  time.  And  their  criticism  of  them,  external 
as  it  was,  is  perfectly  sound. 

But  there  go  other  distinctions  along  with 
that.  I  do  not  see,  as  I  said  to  you  in  the  last 
lecture,  that  there  can  be  the  slightest  shadow 
of  doubt  that  Muhammad,  in  his  earlier  times, 
fell  really  into  such  trances;  heard  really  such 
voices;  that  these  to  him  seemed  to  come  from 
the  outside.     When  he  decided  finally  that  they 


MUSLIM   ATTITUDE  TOWARD    MUHAMMAD        79 

were  divine  revelations,  he  may  have  been  draw- 
ing a  wrong  conclusion;  but  he  had  his  basis  to 
go  upon.  He  felt  that  they  did  not  come  from 
himself;  so  much  for  his  earliest  period,  I  feel, 
is  certain.  Then  it  was  natural  that  these  earlier 
revelations  should  fall  into  such  short,  jerky 
utterances.  They  were  pressed  out  of  him,  as 
it  were — out  of  his  sub-conscious  self,  or  what- 
ever you  choose  to  call  it — and  naturally  they 
were  short  and  broken ;  they  were  scattered ;  they 
came  in  jerks.  But  later,  when  he  came — and  I 
am  afraid  we  cannot  possibly  escape  this  as  a 
fact — when  he  came  consciously  to  manipulate 
these  utterances,  we  find  their  characteristics 
strangely  applied. 

In  the  first  place,  these  utterances  continue, 
in  a  sense,  to  agree  in  form;  they  all  rhyme 
together  in  the  same  fashion  as  did  the  earlier 
ones;  but  now  the  rhyme  often  comes  in  with 
the  most  grotesque,  lumbering  effect.  It  is  the 
length  of  the  sentences  that  makes  all  the  differ- 
ence, and  the  length  of  the  sentences  is  conditioned 
by  the  subject-matter  and  the  source  from  which 
it  is  evidently  derived.  You  cannot  possibly 
imagine,  in  the  case  of  long  periods  dealing  with 


80  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

the  law  of  inheritance,  or  with  the  usages  of  mar- 
riage, with  the  quarrels  of  his  own  followers,  or 
emphasizing  the  position  and  dignity  of  the 
prophet  himself — you  cannot  possibly  imagine 
that  these  things  rose  to  him  from  his  sub- 
consciousness ;  that  he  did  not  know  very  well 
what  he  was  saying  and  had  not  his  own  distinct 
objects  in  the  way  in  which  he  expressed  himself. 
Such  conclusions  we  can  draw  perfectly  defi- 
nitely with  regard  to  the  external  form  of  the 
Qur'an.  At  first,  we  have  only  those  trance- 
utterances  of  Muhammad.  But  in  his  later  life, 
especially  during  his  life  in  Medina,  I  presume 
that  these  revelations  can  best  be  compared  to 
sermons,  or,  as  one  man  has  very  exactly  said, 
to  leading  articles  or  editorials  in  newspapers. 
Their  objects,  frequently,  were  exactly  those  of 
such  leading  articles  or  editorials  in  the  organ 
of  a  party.  Then,  further,  and  now  on  the  side 
of  thought  and  its  implications,  another  ^oint 
which  strikes  us  in  the  Qur'an  is  that  all  of  it 
is  couched  in  the  direct  words  of  Allah.  Allah 
is  supposed  to  be  the  speaker  from  first  to  last. 
He  is  addressing  the  prophet,  and  these  are  the 
words  which  he  uses.     This,  as  you  will  see,  has 


MUSLIM   ATTITUDE  TOWARD    MUHAMMAD        8l 

its  bearings  on  these  later  revelations  which 
Muhammad  forged  for  his  own  advantage.  He 
could  not  equivocate;  all  had  to  be,  as  it  were, 
prefaced  with  a  *Thus  saith  the  Lord."  To 
later  Hebrew  writers  of  religious  tracts  "the 
word  of  the  Lord  came"  similarly;  b^t  with  how 
different  a  moral  burden  1  •  \.    * 

Finally,  all  is  in  exactly  the  form,, of  language 
that  was  used  in  heathen  Arabia  by  the  sooth- 
sayers of  whom  I  have  spoken.  The  jerky  utter- 
ances are  theirs;  the  rhymes  are  theirs;  all  is 
stamped  with  their  stamp  throughout.  So  it 
becomes  perfectly  intelligible  to  us  how  it 
came  about  that  the  heathen  Meccans  said  of 
Muhammad,  "Why,  he  is  nothing  but  one  of  the 
soothsayers."  It  was  only  too  true.  He  spoke 
the  language  of  the  soothsayers ;  in  every  respect 
his  external  appearance  was  that  of  the  sooth- 
sayers. And  what  he  had  become  when  the 
spiiit  worked  upon  him  and  swept  him  away  in 
his  earlier  days,  he  was  compelled  by  the  principle 
of  unity  to  carry  out  in  the  later  days,  when  he 
knew  very  well  indeed  every  word  he  was  bring- 
ing forth. 

Again,  another  strange  point  is  that  though 


82  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

Muhammad  gave  out  these  as  being  the  direct 
words  of  Allah  to  himself,  he  does  not  seem  to 
have  taken  any  pains  at  all  about  the  preservation 
of  them.  Yet  he  speaks,  again  and  again,  of  a 
Book  as  being  revealed  through  him,  although 
he  seems  to  have  given  no  care  to  build  up  such 
a  book  out  of  what  came  to  him.  It  is  conceiv- 
able that  in  his  early  visions  and  contact  with 
the  revealing  Spirit  he  may  have  seen  such  a 
book  and  heard  his  revelations  read  from  it.  He 
would  thus  have  a  fixed  idea  that  what  came  to 
him  was  extracted  from  that  book,  and  that,  as 
it  existed  in  the  heavens,  God  would  see  to  its 
preservation  on  earth.  At  any  rate,  we  have  no 
record  whatever  that  he  gave  care  to  have  the 
words  of  Allah  reduced  to  writing.  If  his  fol- 
lowers chose  to  gather  them  up,  to  imprint  them 
upon  their  memories,  to  use  passages  in  their 
devotions,  that  was  their  affair.  He  does  not 
seem  to  have  urged  anything  of  the  kind,  except 
as  to  using  certain  portions  in  public  prayer.  It 
was  due  only  to  those  tenacious  memories  of 
his  followers  and  to  scattered  scraps  of  writing 
that  they  had  jotted  down,  that  it  was  possible, 
after   the   death    of   Muhammad,   to   gather   up 


MUSLIM   ATTITUDE  TOWARD    MUHAMMAD        83 

fragments — some  portion,  at  least — of  what  had 
been  his  utterances  and  to  preserve  them  for 
future  ages.  And  stranger  still  beyond  even 
that,  the  Muslims  themselves  at  first  do  not  seem 
to  have  felt  this  necessity.  It  was  only  after 
the  early  battles  of  Islam  had  threatened  the  loss 
of  much  of  the  Qur'an — so  much  had  already 
been  lost  which  had  been  held  only  in  the  mem- 
ories of  the  fallen  in  those  battles — only  then  does 
it  seem  to  have  struck  some  of  them  that  it 
might  be  well  to  gather  up  from  memories  and 
writings  all  that  still  survived  of  what  the 
prophet  had  left  to  them.  They  gathered  them  up 
then;  they  put  together,  as  well  as  they  could, 
the  bits  that  seemed  to  refer  to  the  same  subjects. 
In  that  way  they  compiled  a  number  of  chapters, 
varying  in  length,  and  then  they  simply  arranged 
these  according  to  their  length.  The  longest 
was  put  first,  and  thence  they  tapered  down  to  the 
last  which  contains  some  six  verses.  At  the 
beginning  they  put  that  Fatiha  which  I  have 
already  recited  to  you,  and  the  Qur'an  was 
complete. 

Now,  as  it  happened,  what  this  resulted  in  was, 
first,  that  in  each  chapter  of  the  Qur'an  there 


84  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

[  may  be  fragments  derived  from  entirely  different 
periods,  and,  secondly,  that  you  must — if  you 
want  to  get  anything  in  even  rough  chronological 
arrangement — begin  your  reading  at  the  end  of 
the  book.  The  confusions  within  the  chapters 
and  the  questions  of  how  to  date  each  element 
in  them  were  early  recognized  by  the  Muslim 
scholars  themselves.  In  this  they  contrast  hap- 
pily with  the  scholars  both  of  the  Synagogue  and 
of  the  Church.  When  these  saw,  for  example, 
at  the  beginning  of  a  psalm  the  title  "Of  David," 
they  regarded  that  title  as  being  entirely  sacred 
and  not  to  be  touched,  and  if  any  one  sug- 
gested that  the  psalm  might  not  be  by  David, 
that  that  was  only  a  title,  they  felt  sure  that  there 
was  something  wrong  with  that  person.  In 
Islam  I  am  not  aware  of  any  trace  of  such  objec- 
tion to  higher  criticism.  And  the  parallel  is  very 
close  and  striking.  The  early  compilers  of  the 
Qur'an  put  at  the  head  of  each  chapter  the  place 
where  they  thought  it  had  been  revealed,  whether 
it  was  at  Mecca  or  at  Medina.  The  later  criti- 
cism— yet  not  so  much  later,  for  the  criticism 
began  comparatively  early — never  had  the  slight- 
est hesitation,  never  seems  to  have  run  risk  of 


MUSLIM    ATTITUDE  TOWARD    MUHAMMAD        85 

rebuke  in  any  way  for  indicating  that  those  head- 
ings were  not  correct ;  that  passages  in  the  chapter 
were  probably  revealed  somewhere  else  and  that 
the  chapter  itself  was  probably  a  conglomerate. 
This  is  one  point  of  clear-sightedness  and  of  true 
scientific  attitude  that  is  to  be  put  to  the  credit 
of  Islam.  Of  course,  as  I  have  said,  the  criticism 
began  very  early  and  the  chapter  heading  had 
not  time  to  become  so  integral  a  part  of  the 
text  as  did  the  titles  of  the  Psalms. 

But  now  that  we  have  this  book,  this  Qur'an, 
before  us,  which  has  been  called,  and  called  very 
well  *'The  Mind  of  Muhammad,"  how  are  we  to 
read  it?  How  are  we  to  find  our  way  through 
its  labyrinths?  The  Muslim  scholars,  it  is  true, 
have  gone  before  us.  But  we  cannot  always 
consent  to  follow  in  their  steps;  their  results  are 
not  always  such  as  to  appeal  to  us.  Yet,  admit- 
ting their  prepossessions  and  prejudices,  one  way 
or  the  other,  we  must  admit  that  a  great  part 
of  the  critical  work  upon  the  Qur'an  was  done 
before  we  approached  it.  I  do  not  believe  that 
any  book,  with  the  exception  of  the  Christian 
Scriptures — and  then  only,  if  we  take  in  the 
work  on  them  in  the  last  century — has  been  ana- 


86  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

lyzed,  studied  and  commented  upon  so  mmutely 
and  scrupulously  as  has  been  the  Qur'an.  These 
studies  are  of  certain  tolerably  definite  descrip- 
tions. There  is  quite  a  library,  for  example, 
dealing  with  the  critical  analysis  of  the  text; 
where  and  when  each  portion  was  revealed,  and 
which  portions  have  abrogated  others  by  coming 
after  them  and  correcting  them.  There  is  a 
large  library  connected  with  what  we  would 
call  Introduction  to  the  Qur'an,  the  necessary 
sciences  for  him  who  would  study  it;  and  there 
are  commentaries  of  all  kinds.  There  are  com- 
mentaries, for  example,  which  have  as  their 
object  simply  to  guard  or  to  gather  together  all 
the  traditions  of  the  first  generation  as  to  the 
interpretation  of  the  different  passages.  There 
are  other  commentaries  that  take  the  text  as  it 
stands,  and  try  by  grammatical  analysis  to  reach 
what  precisely,  on  the  face  of  the  text.  Is  its 
meaning.  Then,  of  course,  there  are  other 
commentaries,  the  objects  of  which  are  theo- 
logical, and  which  develop  at  great  length,  with 
great  ingenuity,  and,  at  least  so  it  seems  to  us, 
hair  splitting  minuteness,  the  doctrines  that  are 
to  be  deduced  from  this  and  that.     But,  in  this 


MUSLIM   ATTITUDE  TOWARD    MUHAMMAD        87 

connection,  we  must  always  remember  that  the 
Muslim  exegetical  and  theological  method  has 
always  been  that  of  scholastic  analysis. 

It  is  impossible,  then,  to  exaggerate,  really 
to  over-state,  the  amount  of  work  that  has  been 
put  by  Islam  into  the  understanding  of  the 
Qur'an,  and  yet,  as  I  suggested  in  my  last  lecture, 
at  the  best  there  is  much  left  for  us  to  do — for 
us  of  the  Western  world  who  come  with,  I  think, 
on  the  whole,  clearer  eyes,  fewer  prejudices  and 
a  really  wider  knowledge  of  the  external  sur- 
roundings of  Muhammad. 

We  often  hear  it  said  that  the  great  thing 
which  any  one  must  do  who  desires  to  understand 
Islam  is  to  study  the  Qur'an;  **You  must  read 
the  Qur'an"  is  how  it  is  frequently  put.  But 
when  you  talk  about  reading  the  Qur'an,  you 
talk  about  an  exceedingly  difficult  thing.  If  you 
read  it  to  understand  it;  trying  to  put  yourself 
back  into  the  environment  of  Muhammad ;  trying 
to  think  what,  precisely,  these  phrases  meant 
for  him  there  in  Mecca,  or  there  in  Medina,  with 
such  and  such  surroundings ;  if  you  try  to  do 
that  it  becomes  a  different  matter  from  simply 
reading  a  bit  of  Arabic,  and  therefore  I  would 


88  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

throw  out  this  warning  to  you : — Just  as  in  the 
case  of  the  Old  Testament  there  is  no  translation 
at  present  in  existence  that  can  be  called  even 
approximately  adequate,  so  in  the  case  of  the 
Qur'an  there  is  no  translation  that  you  can  trust.  ^ 
That  work  is  still  to  be  done.  It  does  not  matter 
whether  you  regard  it  as  simply  the  work  of 
translating  the  Qur'an  as  it  is  understood  by  the 
native  Muslim  scholars,  following  one  of  their 
grammatical  commentaries  and  basing  your  trans- 
lation upon  that;  or  whether  you  take  up  the 
broader  and,  in  time  to  come,  certainly  unavoid- 
able task  of  translating  the  Qur'an  from  your 
own  knowledge  of  the  language,  the  environ- 
ment, the  religious  situation.  Whichever  view 
you  take,  the  translation  of  the  Qur'an  is  still 
to  come. 

But  even  though  there  is  no  adequate  trans- 
lation of  the  Qur'an  in  existence,  do  not  think  that 
it  is  not  very  fairly  understood  by  the  Muslims. 

*I  notice  that  Palmer's  translation  is  much  used  and 
quoted  by  missionaries.  Palmer  was  a  wonderful  linguist 
and  an  admirable  scholar  in  many  ways,  but  his  translation 
has  some  most  extraordinary  blunders,  many  of  which 
must  have  been  due  to  haste.  Rodwell's  translation  is  a 
careful  piece  of  work  but  hardly  represents  the  tone  of  the 
original.    Sale's  can  now  be  neglected. 


MUSLIM   ATTITUDE  TOWARD   MUHAMMAD        89 

It  is  often  represented  to  us  that  Muslims  take 
the  Qur'an  mechanically.  In  a  way  that  is 
possibly  true.  I  am  afraid  that  we  similarly 
sometimes  take  the  Bible  and  the  prayer  book 
mechanically.  But  never  think  that  at  the  bot- 
tom of  it  all  they  take  it  mechanically.  When 
you  see  a  Muslim  sitting  somewhere  in  the 
corner  of  a  mosque,  reciting  to  himself  passages 
from  the  book — reciting  always  from  mem- 
ory, although  the  book  may  lie  open  upon  his 
knee — these  are  cadences  which  have  become 
familiar  but  which  also  mean  much  for  him  in 
his  devotional  life.  And  do  not  be  misled  to 
think  that  such  reciting  is  anything  like  the 
mechanical  operation  of  a  Buddhist  prayer-wheel, 
where  the  turning  means  everything.  That  is 
not  so.  The  feeling  of  the  educated  Muslim 
for  the  meaning  of  the  Qur'an  is  quite  as  precise ; 
his  endeavor  to  reach  it,  to  feel  it,  is  quite  as 
close  and  living  as  anything  we  have  with  regard 
to  our  Scriptures. 

I  have  now  put  before  you  very  shortly  what 
seems  to  me  to  be  the  true  historical  position  with 
regard  to  the  person  of  Muhammad  and  with 
regard  to  the  Qur'an,  its  origin  and  its  nature. 


90  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

So  much  should  be  known  for  the  sacred  truth 
of  history.  It  should  also  be  known  for  our 
estimate  of  the  man  Muhammad,  for  charity 
and  right  feeling  towards  him.  But,  of  course, 
for  the  missionary  who  is  living  amongst  Mus- 
lims, who  has  to  work  with  them,  who  has  to 
affect  them,  a  far  more  important  thing  than  that 
is  the  question,  What  does  Muhammad  mean 
for  present-day  Muhammadans  ?  Similarly  what 
does  the  Qur'an  mean  for  its  Muslim  reader  now  ? 
What  does  he  think,  believe  of  it  and  of  its 
utterer  ?    What  are  his  attitudes  to  them  ?    These 

« 

questions  I  must  now  approach. 

In  the  first  place,  you  must  not  think  that  Islam 
holds  one  thought  only  on  these  matters.  The 
truth  is  that  Islam  is  more  broken  into  sects 
than  even  Christendom.  Let  me  illustrate  this 
by  perhaps  the  most  remarkable  experience  I  had 
in  my  Eastern  wanderings. 

I  suppose  every  child  has  at  some  time  wished 
that  he  could  have  had  part  in  the  procession 
of  the  prophets  coming  down  the  hill  to  meet 
Saul,  "prophesying"  with  pipe,  timbrel  and  harp 
before  them,  and  then  sweeping  Saul  up,  he,  too, 
"prophesying,"   now  in  their  midst.     I  suppose 


MUSLIM   ATTITUDE  TOWARD   MUHAMMAD        9I 

that  he  has  also  wished  that  he  might  have  wit- 
nessed that  scene  at  Mount  Carmel — the  priests  of 
Baal  crying  aloud  to  their  god  and  leaping  about 
the  altars,  cutting  themselves  with  knives.  It 
was  my  privilege — rather  a  rare  one — to  take  part 
in  what  was  practically  the  same  as  that  scene, 
a  procession  of  darwishes  marching  down  and 
"prophesying"  as  they  came;  and  it  was  also 
made  possible  for  me,  on  the  same  occasion,  to 
see  what  is  probably  the  nearest  parallel  to  that 
other  scene  on  Mount  Carmel  with  the  priests 
of  Baal  that  still  survives  amongst  people  that 
can,  in  any  respect,  be  called  civilized.  I  am 
bound  to  confess  that  the  spirit  did  not  fall  upon 
me  and  make  me  "prophesy,"  as  it  did  Saul ;  but 
I  was  sufficiently  affected  to  make  very  real  to 
me  the  pull  upon  the  nerves  which  such  scenes 
must  exercise. 

It  fell  in  this  wise : — On  the  tenth  day  of  the 
month  of  Muharram,  the  first  month  of  the  Mus- 
lim year,  on  the  night  of  that  day,  the  Shrite  sect 
of  Muslims  has  a  great  mourning  ceremony  for 
the  slaughter  of  the  grandson  of  the  Prophet, 
al-Husayn,  and  of  many  of  his  family  at  Kerbela 
near  Baghdad,  who  fell  there  in  battle  against 


92  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

fearful  odds.  If  there  is  a  thing  that  stirs  Persian 
Islam  to  utter  frenzy,  a  frenzy  of  grief,  a  frenzy 
of  hate,  a  frenzy  of  love,  it  is  the  memory  of 
this — the  great  tragedy  of  Islam,  and  every  year 
when  the  day  comes  round  it  is  celebrated  at 
Kerbela  by  what  can  be  called,  in  a  sense,  a  Pas- 
sion Play  in  which  the  whole  tale,  as  tradition 
tells  it,  is  reproduced  in  scenes.  In  other  import- 
ant centres  of  Islam  where  any  sufficient  number 
of  Shrites  are  gathered,  it  takes  the  form  of  a 
great  procession  at  night  followed  by  a  speech, 
reciting  the  wrongs,  the  sorrows  and  the  death 
of  al-Husayn  and  his  family. 

It  was  my  very  great  privilege,  then,  while  in 
Cairo,  to  have  part  in  that  procession  and  to  hear 
that  speech.  The  procession  itself  let  me  describe 
to  you.  It  passed  through  the  principal  streets 
of  the  native  part  of  Cairo,  the  Medina,  or  City 
in  the  strict  sense,  starting  from  the  Gamaliya, 
passing  the  mosque  of  the  Hasanen  proceeding 
down  the  New  Street  and  finally  through 
by-ways  reaching  the  house  in  the  Hamzawiya, 
the  use  of  which  for  these  ceremonies  during 
the  first  ten  days  of  Muharram  was  bequeathed 
by  a  pious  Shrite.     Had  it   not  been  that  the 


MUSLIM    ATTITUDE  TOWARD    MUHAMMAD        93 

men  composing  the  first  three  or  four  ranks  in 
the  procession  wore  black  fezzes,  instead  of  tall 
hats,  they  might,  so  far  as  their  appearance  was 
concerned,  have  been  the  kirk  session  or  elders 
of  some  Presbyterian  church.  These  maintained 
a  decent  and  composed  solemnity  of  visage. 
But  behind  them  came  the  bands  of  darwishes, 
stripped  to  the  waist  and  prophesying  after  their 
fashion.  The  prophesying  consisted  of  loud  wail- 
ings,  ejaculations,  groans ;  of  striking  their  breasts 
with  their  fists  and  slapping  their  shoulders 
with  their  open  hands;  of  beating  their  backs 
with  heavy  iron  chains;  or  of  cutting  their  fore- 
heads with  swords.  The  only  light  came  from 
great  iron  cressets  filled  with  burning  wood, 
carried  In  the  midst  and  showering  fiery  frag- 
ments everywhere,  and  from  two  rows  of  candles 
in  tall  candle  glasses,  carried  by  boys  down  each 
side  of  the  procession  and  a  little  ahead  of  it  and 
moving  as  it  moved.  Otherwise  we  walked 
through  darkness  with  the  black  houses  rising 
on  either  hand  and  sudden  flashes  of  the  eager 
faces  of  spectators  along  them.  There  was 
no  music,  for  this  was  a  procession  of  mourners, 
and  tumultuous,  violent,  orgiastic  as  they  were, 


94  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

theirs  seemed  to  me  to  be  very  genuine  mourning. 
They  had  prepared,  I  knew,  for  the  cutting  of 
their  foreheads  by  shaving  clean  the  forward 
part  of  the  scalp;  but  that  did  not  prevent  the 
blood  and  wounds  from  being  very  real.  All 
in  all,  it  was  the  strangest,  the  most  striking, 
the  most  individual  scene  I  have  ever  witnessed 
in  my  life. 

So  down  the  street  in  the  front  rank  between 
the  Persian  consul-general  and  his  secretary  I 
marched.  To  have  been  farther  back  in  the 
midst  of  the  chaos  behind  would  certainly  have 
been  more  interesting;  but  that  could  not  be. 
Yet  I  do  not  think  that  there  would  have  been 
any  danger  there,  even  if  I  had  been  discovered 
not  to  be  a  Muslim.  An  element  in  the  Kerbela 
legend  is  that  a  Christian  ambassador  exerted 
himself  to  save  al-Husayn  and  he  is  often  made 
part  of  the  drama.  My  dress  was  the  frock 
coat  suit  which  I  am  wearing  at  present,  except 
that  then  I  had  on  a  fez.  At  last  the  procession 
reached  the  court-yard  of  the  house  of  which  I 
have  spoken,  and  in  that  court-yard  came  out  still 
more  plainly  the  analogy,  or "  rather  the  exact 
similarity,  that  such  scenes  bear  to  those  of  which 


MUSLIM    ATTITUDE   TOWARD    MUHAMMAD         95 

we  read  in  the  Old  Testament,  especially  to  the 
tumultuous  shrieking,  leaping  and  crying  aloud 
upon  their  god  of  the  priests  of  Baal  and  the 
cutting  themselves  with  knives.  It  was  all  per- 
fectly genuine;  the  blood  was  real  blood;  the 
blows  were  hard,  real  blows;  and  with  regard  to 
the  great  masses — that  is,  with  the  exception  of 
some  of  the  upper  classes  who  were  distinctly  per- 
functory in  their  breast-thumpings — there  could 
be  no  question  at  all  of  sincerity. 

This  was  mourning,  then,  for  the  grandson  of 
the  Prophet,  and  reverence  for  the  family  of  the 
Prophet  is  a  universally  accepted  duty  in  Islam. 
When  by  any  chance,  I  alluded  in  the  presence  of 
one  of  my  Muslim  friends  to  the  mosque  of  the 
Hasanen,  as  it  is  commonly  called,  he  always 
took  occasion,  a  moment  afterwards,  to  speak 
of  it  as  the  mosque  of  Sayyidna  Husen,  "Our 
Lord  Husen." 

But  yet  I  am  in  grave  doubt — or  rather  in  no 
doubt  whatever — how  my  Sunnite  friends  would 
have  regarded  my  thus  taking  part  in  a  Shi'Ite 
procession.  How  would  an  Orangeman  regard 
a  friend  who  was  seen  celebrating  Saint  Pat- 
rick's Day?     One  of  my  Cairene  friends,  who 


96  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

had  been  a  Sunnite  Muslim  but  who  had  become 
a  Christian,  had  taken  over  with  him  his  hatred 
of  Shrites,  and  could  not  find  enough  to  say  to 
their  discredit.  It  is  curious,  also,  to  notice  that 
in  Lane's  monumental  and  nearly  exhaustive 
work  on  the  modern  Egyptians,  there  is  almost 
no  mention  of  the  Shi'ites. 

I  have  told  this  to  illustrate  the  enormous  gulf 
that  has  entered  Islam  at  this  point.  It  affects 
even  our  precise  subject — the  doctrine  of  Islam 
as  to  the  person  of  Muhammad — because,  by  a 
hardly  intelligible  development,  the  descendants 
of  Muhammad  have  come  to  be  of  more  Import- 
ance for  Shrites  than  Muhammad  himself.  But 
into  the  ramifications  of  the  Shi'ite  position  I 
cannot  now  enter.  Some  of  them  involve  a  prac- 
tical deifying  of  *Ali  and  his  descendants;  all  tend 
to  w^hat  may  be  called  a  more  High  Church 
doctrine  than  that  of  the  Sunnites.  Practically, 
this  comes  to  two  systems  of  theology  and  law, 
Sunnite  and  Shi^ite,  with,  inside  of  each  of  these, 
further  endless  subdivisions.  Crossings  and  mix- 
ings take  place  also,  to  some  extent,  and  the  old 
pre-Muslim  faith  of  each  geographical  district 
has  coloured  its  special  variety,  of  heresy.     Each 

•-■  —  --.i  Vli    11^       'i  .       I   •., 


MUSLIM   ATTITUDE   TOWARD    MUHAMMAD        97 

missionary  will  need,  while  holding  fast  as  a 
clue  the  broad  outlines  of  what  may  be  called 
''book-Islam,"  to  study  for  himself  the  particular 
phases  of  his  own  field. 

But  returning  to  our  other  broad  difference, 
the  difference,  I  mean,  between  the  attitude  of  the 
historian  towards  the  Qur'an  and  Muhammad 
and  the  present-day  attitude  towards  them,  how 
does  that  stand  ?  Here  there  has  come  into  play 
one  of  the  most  striking  characteristics  of  Islam. 
It  is  a  readiness  to  pick  up  odds  and  ends  of 
doctrine  from  the  outside,  non-Muslim  world. 
These  are  then  adapted,  made  over  more  or  less 
into  Muslim  form,  yet  still  leaving  it  perfectly 
plain  that  they  have  been  thus  promiscuously 
gathered  up. 

This  is  the  only  explanation  possible  of  the 
strange  development  that  has  taken  place  in  the 
doctrine  of  the  person  of  Muhammad.  For 
example,  there  Is  in  circulation  a  tradition,  and 
it  is  generally  accepted  in  Islam — I  do  not  believe 
that  it  is  doubted  by  any  orthodox  Muslim — 
that  puts  into  the  mouth  of  Allah  the  following : — 
"Had  it  not  been  for  thee  (Muhammad)  I  had 
not  created  the  worlds."  That  is,  Muhammad 
7 


98  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

or  the  determination  to  create  Muhammad  had 
been  there  from  the  beginning  and  the  worlds 
were  created  and  exist  only  for  his  sake. 

Again,  there  is  a  statement  put  into  the  mouth 
of  Muhammad  himself  which  tradition  univer- 
sally accepts : — '*I  was  a  prophet  when  Adam 
was  still  between  clay  and  water,"  that  is,  when 
Adam  was  not  yet  formed.  You  see  that  the 
prophetship  of  Muhammad  is  thus  moved  back 
before  the  creation  of  the  human  race.  Yet  this 
may  be  taken  as  a  development  of  another  tradi- 
tion by  which  Islam  has  endeavored  to  construct 
for  Allah  a  legal  claim  on  the  worship  of  man- 
kind. When  Adam  was  created,  Allah  drew 
forth  from  him  all  his  seed  to  be,  like  millions 
on  millions  of  swarming  ants,  and  asked  them, 
"Am  I  not  your  Lord?"  To  which  they  replied, 
**Yea,  verily!"  This  was  the  primal  covenant 
in  Islam,  and  is  alluded  to  in  Muslim  theological 
systems  as  'The  Day  of  'Am  I  not?'" 

Then  there  is  another  that  calls  Muhammad 
"The  first  created  and  the  last  to  rise  in  the 
resurrection."  Another  still  stranger  series  of  tra- 
ditions, complicated  and  contradictory  in  many 
ways,  speaks  of  a  certain  mysterious  Light  of 


MUSLIM   ATTITUDE   TOWARD    MUHAMMAD         99 

Muhammad.  This  Hght  is  supposed  to  have 
been  a  pecuHar  radiance  that  shone  in  the  faces 
of  Muhammad's  ancestry  in  the  direct  Hne  back- 
ward. That  is  to  say,  the  idea  is  that  he  was 
being  passed  down  through  that  ancestry,  in  a 
pecuharly  personal  way,  and  that  his  presence  in 
each  Hnk  of  the  genealogy  was  indicated  by  this 
peculiar  radiance.  In  other  traditions  this  has 
taken  a  still  more  extravagant  form.  You  will 
meet  with  such  sayings  as  this:  "Allah  created 
in  the  beginning  of  all  things  the  Light  of 
Muhammad.  From  a  portion  of  it  He  then  cre- 
ated His  throne;  from  another  portion  of  it  He 
created  the  lower  worlds;  from  another  portion 
of  it  He  created  the  tablet  on  which  the  decrees 
of  destiny  are  written,  and  lastly  from  another 
portion,  preserved  for  the  purpose,  came  the 
Prophet  himself." 

You  see,  then,  that  there  grew  up  under  partly 
Christian,  partly  Neo-Platonic,  partly  Persian 
influences  what  can  be  described  as  almost 
precisely  the  Arian  doctrine  of  Christ.  The 
Uncreated  Word  of  Christian  doctrine,  the  dy- 
namic emanations  of  Neo-Platonism,  the  Karend, 
or  Royal  Splendour  of  the  Persian  Kings  have 


lOO  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

all  been  absorbed  after  a  fashion,  but  by  no  means 
assimilated. 

To  this  there  have  been  curious  consequences. 
If  Muhammad  was  this  peculiar  first-created  of  all 
creatures,  a  Light  from  Allah  Himself — Light  of 
Light,  you  might  say — if  he  was  that,  what  of  his 
moral  nature?  Islam  has  been  driven  to  laying 
down  the  position  that  he  was  morally  perfect, 
is — Muslim  theologians  would  put  it — the  one 
morally  perfect  creature  that  has  ever  been. 
That,  of  course,  is  directly  in  the  teeth  of 
statements  in  the  Qur'an  (e.  g.  xlviii :  i,  2); 
but  the  logic  that  is  derived  from  the  aspirations 
of  religion  does  not  care  anything  for  such  con- 
tradictions, and  so  Islam  holds,  at  the  present 
time,  a  fixed  doctrine  of  the  sinlessness  of  its. 
Prophet. 

But,  further,  if  he  was  this  sinless  being,  and 
if  a  peculiar  radiance  could  be  traced  down  the 
line  of  his  descent,  what  of  the  faith  and  conduct 
of  his  parents  and  ancestors?  Upon  that  subject 
the  first  generations  of  Islam  had  no  question. 
There  are  traditions  still  in  existence  which  assert 
that  both  the  father  and  the  mother  of  Muham- 
mad must  of  necessity  be  in  the  Fire.     Before 


MUSLIM   ATTITUDE  TOWARD   MUHAMMAD      lOI 

the  coming  of  Muhammad  there  was  no  true 
guidance;  there  was  no  one  to  follow.  He 
entered  upon  his  mission  as  a  prophet  after  they 
were  dead.  Their  fate,  logically,  was  settled. 
Hypothetically  they  might  have  been  saved  as 
holders  of  the  doctrine  taught  by  Jesus,  the  last 
prophet;  but  Islam  always  takes  it  for  granted 
that  none  so  believing  was  left,  that  all  had  fallen 
away  to  the  Christian  perversion  of  the  teaching 
of  Jesus.  What,  then,  was  to  be  done  with  the 
clash  between  these  traditions,  this  theological 
position,  and  the  doctrine  of  the  Light  of  Muham- 
mad? It  was  easy  to  hold  that  their  conduct 
was  immaculate,  especially  that  they  must  all 
have  been  born  In  wedlock,  lawful  even  accord- 
ing to  strict  Muslim  law.  But  what  of  their 
faith?  As  to  that,  a  great  many  devices  were 
tried,  and  one  of  them,  for  long,  held  the  field, 
I  do  not  know  how  the  Muslims  of  the  present 
day  regard  it.  One  doctrine  grew  up  that  after 
Muhammad  had  appeared  as  a  prophet,  he  asked 
Allah  what  had  been  the  fate  of  his  parents,  and 
was  told  that  as  they  had  not  followed  one  of 
the  prophets — had  not  been  able  to,  but  still  had 
not — that  they,   of   necessity,   would  be   in   the 


102  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

Fire.  Upon  that  he  prayed  Allah  that  such  might 
not  be  the  fate  of  his  father  and  mother,  and  the 
heart  of  Allah  was  touched,  and  he  raised  up 
from  the  dead  the  father  and  mother  of  Muham- 
mad, and  they  there  and  then  professed  their 
faith  in  their  son  and  returned  unto  their  dust. 
So  the  situation  was  saved.  I  do  not  know  that 
the  same  thing  was  applied  to  Muhammad's 
ancestry  any  further  back.  That  might  have 
been  a  more  complicated  and  difficult  situation. 
But,  further,  from  this  doctrine  of  the  per- 
son of  Muhammad,  as  it  grew  up,  there  came 
an  immense  strengthening  of  another  attitude 
towards  Muhammad  which  had  existed  practi- 
cally from  the  beginning.  The  Semiteis  have 
always  been  a  moralizing  race;  they  have  liked 
to  have  things  put  before  them  in  sententious 
sentences.  The  Book  of  Proverbs,  in  its  differ- 
ent parts,  exactly  represents  different  phases  of 
this  tendency.  They  have  liked,  especially,  to 
have  concrete  examples  put  before  them,  and 
they  have  felt  that  if  they  only  followed  those 
examples,  did  as  this  man  did  who  was  notori- 
ously a  wise  man,  or  followed  the  counsel  of  this 
other  man  who  was  certainly  a  very  pious  man, 


MUSLIM   ATTITUDE  TOWARD    MUHAMMAD      IO3 

that  then  they  would  be  safe  and  successful  for 
this  world  and  the  next.  To  follow  the  custom 
of  the  fathers  and  to  keep  in  the  old  paths  has 
been  the  tendency  of  all  the  Semites  and  especially 
the  tendency  of  the  desert. 

To  that  came  Muhammad,  and  upon  his  one 
example  early  Islam  learned  to  lean.  It  is  the 
desire  of  every  pious  Muslim  to  model  his  life 
in  every  possible  particular  upon  that  of  the 
Prophet.  And,  after  a  fashion,  it  has  been  pos- 
sible to  do  so.  We  hear  a  great  deal  nowadays 
from  time  to  time  about  the  doing  as  Jesus  did; 
the  thinking  of  what  He  would  do;  the  model- 
ling of  our  life  upon  His;  and  some  one,  recently, 
greatly  daring,  said  that  such  an  attitude  had 
always  led  to  unhealthy  results.  It  was,  perhaps, 
rather  a  broad  statement;  but  I  think  we  can 
understand  what  he  meant.  At  any  rate,  we 
must  distinguish  two  sides  of  this  imitation : 
one,  the  following  in  the  inner  life;  and  another, 
the  copying  of  the  external  actions  of  life. 

But  in  Islam,  the  close  following  of  Muhammad 
as  a  guide  in  life  means  the  second  of  these 
only.  Yet  it  is  of  the  deepest  and  most  wide- 
reaching   importance.     For   example,    I   do   not 


104  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

think  that  there  can  be  any  question  that  the 
position  of  women  in  Islam  is  practically  due 
to  the  attitude  of  Muhammad  himself.  This 
is  pretty  well  admitted  in  the  attempts  which 
have  been  made — and  this  is  the  common  explan- 
ation and  defense  of  the  present  day — to  show 
that  Muhammad's  position  was  peculiar;  that 
he  did  these  things  bearing  upon  women  as  a 
prophet;  as  a  politician;  as  a  political  leader; 
for  one  reason  or  another.  But  to  put  the  case 
in  a  word,  I  cannot  conceive  of  anything  that 
would  have  made  such  an  enormous  difference 
in  the  position  of  woman  in  Islam  as  if  Muham- 
mad, after  the  death  of  his  first  wife,  had 
remained  a  monogamist,  for  one  point;  and,  if, 
for  another  point,  he  had  encouraged  his  wife 
to  go  with  unveiled  face  as  was  the  custom  and 
is  the  custom  to  this  day,  for  that  matter,  for  the 
free  women  of  the  desert.  That  would  have 
been  enough ;  the  woman  question  in  Islam  would 
hardly  now  exist.  Every  Muslim  would  have 
followed  in  that,  as  in  everything  else,  the  example 
of  his  prophet.  Monogamy  would  be  the  rule 
in  Islam,  while  the  veil  would  never  have  existed 
except  for  the  insane  jealousy  of  Muhammad. 


MUSLIM   ATTITUDE  TOWARD    MUHAMMAD      IO5 

Further,  it  is  a  very  curious  criticism  upon  this 
doctrine  of  the  imitation  of  the  Prophet  that 
when  MusHms  of  the  present  time — that  is, 
educated  MusHms — speak  about  the  veil,  they  in- 
variably explain  that  the  veil  is  not  binding  upon 
all  women;  that  it  was  binding  only  upon  the 
wives  of  the  Prophet.  By  that  means  an  attempt 
is  now  being  made  to  get  rid  of  the  obligation 
of  wearing  it.  There  is  no  prophet  at  present 
alive  with  wives  over  whom  to  be  jealous. 

So  much,  then,  broadly,  for  the  doctrine  of  the 
person  of  Muhammad.  What  of  the  doctrine 
of  the  nature  of  the  Qur'an?  Here,  again,  the 
tendency  of  Islam  to  assimilate  doctrines  from 
without  early  asserted  itself,  and  there  can  be 
no  question  that  the  development  of  the  doctrine 
of  the  Qur'an  was  very  early  affected  by  the 
doctrine  of  the  Word  of  God  that  became  flesh 
and  dwelt  among  men,  especially  as  that  was 
formulated  by  the  Greek  Church.  The  view 
which  we  find  crystallizing  may  be  put  thus : — 
The  Qur'an  is  to  be  regarded  as  uncreated. 
That  is,  It  has  existed  from  all  the  ages  with 
Allah.  It  is  not  that  it  was  the  first  of  all 
created  things,  as  was  Muhammad,  rather,  it  is 


I06  ASPECTS   OF    ISLAM 

absolutely  uncreated  and  existent,  from  all  eter- 
nity,  in  the  essence  of  Allah. 

Now  In  what  sense  is  that  said?  I  think  I 
can  illustrate  its  meaning  by  a  parallel  with  the 
Christian  doctrine  of  the  Logos  that  was  from 
all  eternity  in  the  bosom  of  the  Father  by  whom 
all  things  were  made,  and  the  Word  as  it  became 
incarnate  in  Jesus  and  moved  amongst  us. 
That  is  precisely  the  distinction — of  course,  with 
slightly  changed  language — that  is  made  by  the 
Muslim  theologian,  when  he  defines  the  doctrine 
that  the  Qur'an  is  uncreated.  He  says,  "From 
all  eternity  there  was  a  quality  existent  in  the 
essence  of  Allah,  a  quality  not  written  in  letters ; 
not  pronounced  in  sounds;  but  simply  a  quality 
called  Speech."  With  that  eternal  essential  qual- 
ity Allah  created  all  things.  We  have  that,  then, 
on  the  one  hand,  this  quality  from  all  eternity. 
On  the  other  hand,  we  have  a  manifestation  of 
that  quality  of  Speech  so  existent  in  the  essence 
of  Allah,  a  manifestation  here  upon  earth  which 
is  written  with  letters,  which  is  pronounced  In 
sounds,  and  which  is  called  the  Qur'an.  The 
term  "Qur'an"  and  the  term  "Word  of  God" 
may  be  used  of  either  of  these. 


MUSLIM    ATTITUDE   TOWARD    MUHAMMAD      IO7 

The  parallel,   in   all   this,    with   the   Christian 
Logos  is  so  close  that  I  make  no  question  that  the 
Muslim  view  is  dependent  upon  it.     Yet  it  should 
be  noticed  that  while  the  Christian  Logos  involves 
the  two  ideas  of  ratio  and  oratio,  the  Muslim 
has  that  of  oratio,  "speech"  only.     Muslim  theo- 
logians seem  to  shrink  from  connecting  "reason" 
with  Allah.     But  it  will  be  asked,  What  is  the 
real   relationship   between  Allah's  quality  called 
Speech   and   the    Qur'an?     What   do   we   mean 
when  we  say  that  Speech  is  manifested  here  in 
written  form?     The  answer  is  put  thus:  What 
is   understood    from   the   words   of   the   Qur'an 
equals  what  would  be  understood  from  Allah's 
quality  of   Speech   if  the  veil  were  withdrawn 
from  our  minds,  and  we  could  enter  into  direct 
contact  with  that  divine  quality.    The  theologians 
are  careful  to  add  that  the  one  is  not  the  other ; 
that  would  be  to  confuse  created  and  uncreated; 
but   what   is   understood    from   the    one    is    the 
equivalent  of  what  would   be  understood    from 
the  other  if  we  could  reach  it,   as  we,  In  this 
tabernacle  of  flesh,  cannot. 

Now,  of  course,  that  is  a  statement  which  only 
pushes  the  matter  a  little  further  back  and  which 


I08  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

leads   to   other  questions.     It   led,    for   instance, 
to  the  question,  To  whom  are  we  to  ascribe  the 
words,  the  phrasing,  in  which  this  eternal,  uncre- 
ated word  of  Allah  is  couched  in  the  Qur'an,  and 
through    which    it    is    manifested    to    man?     In 
answer,  some  held  that  the  phrasing  is  due  to 
the   revealing  spirit,   Gabriel;  others  even  tried 
to  hold  that  it  was  Muhammad  himself  who  sup- 
plied  the   words;   but,   in   general,   the  position 
reached  by  Islam  has  been  that  the  phrasing  also 
goes  back  to  the  writing  of  the  revelation  upon 
the  Preserved  Tablet  by  the  Pen  moved  by  the 
creative  Will  of  Allah  Himself,  and  has  thus  no 
human  element.     There,  I  think,  the  theologians 
have  tried  to  be  more  precise  than  they  logically 
could.     But,  at  any  rate,   these  questions   have 
been  asked;   and  that   is  the  final  answer   that 
has  been  reached  by  the  strictly  orthodox  school. 
It  would  have  meant  much  for  Islam  if  the  con- 
ception of  a  human  element  in  its  sacred  book 
could  have  gained  a  secure  footing;  as  It  is,  the 
standing  of  that  conception  has  wavered  between 
that  of  damnable  unbelief  and  that  of  a  more 
or  less   heretical   innovation. 

In  this  sense,  then,  the  Qur'an  is  called  the 


MUSLIM    ATTITUDE  TOWARD    MUHAMMAD      IO9 

Word  of    Allah    and    is    said    to  be   uncreated. 
But,  of  course,  this  position  which  I  have  put 
before  you  is  only  the  general  one;  others  have 
been  held  in  the  Muslim  world.     So  there  have 
been  extremists,  and  there  still  are,  who  attempt 
to  take  up  the  position  that  it   is  not  what  is 
understood   from  the  words   that  is   uncreated; 
the  words  themselves  are  the  Word  of  Allah. 
They  have  even   felt  themselves   driven  by   the 
logic  of  the  situation  to  say  that  when  any  one 
repeated  the  Qur'an,  the  words  that  came  from 
him,  his  very  utterance  itself,  must  be  spoken  of 
as  eternal  in  their  nature.     Such,  then,  broadly, 
have  been  the  positions  upon   Muhammad   and 
upon  the  Qur'an  reached  by  the  Church  of  Islam. 
But   what   are  the   tendencies   at  the  present 
day,   the  tendencies,   I   mean,   among  the  more 
educated    Muslims   who  are   beginning   to    face 
the  outside  world  and  are  trying  to  bring  their 
theology    into    some    accordance    therewith?     A 
very  pronounced  one  is,  Go  back  to  Muhammad ; 
throw  away  everything  and  try  to  reach  what 
he  said,  what  he  thought ;  take  his  positions  as  a 
starting   point   and    not   the   reasonings    of   the 
theologians  about  him;  sweep  away  systematic 


no  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

theology  and  go  back  simply  to  the  words  of  the 
Prophet  himself  and  begin  again.  Now,  that, 
undoubtedly,  is  a  possible  course  to  follow;  but 
when  they  do  get  back  to  Muhammad  they  will 
be  driven  to  take  him  upon  a  historical  basis. 
They  will  have  to  say  to  themselves,  We  are 
going  back  to  Muhammad;  who,  really,  was 
Muhammad,  and  what  kind  of  a  man  was  he? 
When  they  do  that,  an  era  for  Islam  will  have 
drawn  near.  We  can  safely  say,  Go  back  to 
Christ.  Whatever  may  happen  with  the  Gospels, 
whatever  criticism  may  apply  to  them,  we  feel 
and  believe — historically  and  critically,  we  are 
justified  in  believing — that  that  person,  that 
figure  will  remain  untouched.  But  no  one  at 
all  who  has  studied  the  life  of  Muhammad  can 
have  any  dream  of  such  an  imimunity  and  safety 
for  him.  Ut  is  only  when  his  figure  is  seen 
through  the  mist  of  tradition,  surrounded  by 
the  awe  and  reverence  of  the  unexamining,  the 
uncritical  and  the  morally  undeveloped,  that  there 
can  be  any  thought  of  taking  him  as  a  religious 
guide  and  as  a  pattern  for  life.  )  As  the  moral 
standard  of  the  masses  of  Islam  is  raised  and 
the  facts  of  the  life  of  Muhammad  become  more 


O 


MUSLIM    ATTITUDE   TOWARD    MUHAMMAD       III 

widely   known,   a   tremendous   overturning   will 
be  inevitable. 

But    another    tendency    is,    Go    back    to    the 
Our'an;  drop  away  all  traditions;  drop  away  all 
the  subtleties  of  the  schoolmen  and  take  the  word 
of  the  Our'an  as  it  stands;   it  is  the  Word  of 
Allah,  the  unerring  guide  which  He  has  given 
to  man.     That,   too,   is   a  very  possible   course. 
But  when  we  do  go  back  to  the  Qur'an,  it  will 
simply  mean  going  back  to  the  question  of  the 
historical   Muhammad;   the   question  will  really 
be   the    same.     It  is  possible    for   the   educated 
Muslim  of  the  present  day  to  use  these  as  his 
methods;  to  try  to  seek  safety  and  salvation  for 
his  faith  in  these  ways;  only  because  he  has  not 
yet  traced  them  out  to  the  end.     The  end  will 
come,    and    when    that    end    comes    will    Islam 
escape,  and  if  so,  how?     Is  there  any  possibility 
of  guessing  at  the   drift   of   the  reconstruction 
that  will  follow?     Many,  I  know,  will  say  that 
there  can  be  no  reconstruction;  that  Islam  will 
be  ended.     But  religions  are  never  ended;  they 
develop  into  new  forms,  absorb  new  life  and  go 
on  again.     By  no  such  easy  method  will  Qiris- 
tianity  conquer.     As  for  Islam,  I  think  that  the 


112  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

line  of  escape  for  it  will  be,  first,  through  its 
mystical  position,  with  which  I  have  already 
dealt  briefly.  That  position,  upon  which  I  shall 
have  to  enter  hereafter  in  more  detail,  will  hold 
its  own,  even  after  the  feeling  has  been  reached 
that  it  is  unsafe  to  study  Muhammad  any 
further;  that  things  come  up  in  that  study  which 
are  not  possible  in  a  religious  leader  for  this 
century.  But  secondly,  even  then  there  will 
remain  loyalty  to  the  abstraction,  Islam,  to  its 
history  and  all  that  there  has  been  in  it  of 
religious  fervour  and  life.  And,  thirdly,  there 
will  come  into  play  and  will  make  practical  appli- 
cation of  the  mystical  attitude  and  of  the  loyalty 
to  Islam,  a  great  formative  principle,  the  prin- 
ciple of  life  and  development  in  Islam,  which 
is  called  the  Agreement  of  the  Muslim  people. 
Tradition  from  Muhammad  lays  down,  "My 
people  will  never  agree  upon  an  error,"  and,  going 
upon  that,  Islam  has  felt  that  whenever  the  general 
body  of  the  Muslim  people  has  reached  a  con- 
clusion upon  a  doctrine  or  a  point  of  law,  such 
a  conclusion  Is  to  be  accepted,  because  it  is  the 
voice  of  the  people. 

This    agreement   has   overridden,    again    and 


MUSLIM    ATTITUDE  TOWARD    MUHAMMAD       II3 

again,  direct  commands  in  the  Qur'an.  It  has 
overridden  absolutely  certain  and  accepted  tradi- 
tions from  the  Prophet.  The  mere  fact  that 
the  people  of  Muhammad  agreed  that  this  must 
be  the  position  to  be  held,  has  been  enough. 
The  other  has  quietly  dropped  out  of  sight  and 
survives  in  history  only.  You  will  see  that  this 
is  like  the  principle  of  a  dogma-forming  power 
inherent  in  the  Christian  Church,  and  like  the 
principle,  too,  of  Vincent  of  Lerins :  What 
always ;  what  everywhere ;  what  by  everybody  has 
been  held  to  be  Christian  verity,  that  is  Chris- 
tian verity.  Using,  then,  this  principle  of 
Agreement,  loyalty  to  Islam  and  the  mystical 
attitude,  Muslims  may  escape  from  the  supposed 
cul-de-sac  of  the  life  of  Muhammad,  and  it  seems 
perfectly  fair  to  say  that  at  the  present  day  all 
thinking  and  devout  Muslims  are  mystics.  That, 
at  least,  was  my  experience.  Of  course,  there 
is  a  residuum  that  you  cannot  call  sincere; 
another  that  you  cannot  call  devout;  but  when 
you  take  the  man  in  Islam  who  really  does  think 
and  is  sincerely  religious,  you  may  be  perfectly 
sure  that  his  attitude  is  mystical. 

Certainly  there  is  still  a  considerable  element  in 
8 


114  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

Islam  who  may  be  said  to  think  in  a  way,  and 
to  whom  the  mechanical  formulae  of  the  scho- 
lastic theology  and  philosophy  bring  satisfaction; 
when  the  scholastic  theology  and  philosophy  go, 
they  will  go  with  it.  There  is  also  a  large 
element  whose  faith  is  based  upon  the  faith  of  a 
former  generation  and  is  cultivated  with  inherited 
religious  phrases.  But  taking  the  spiritually 
alive  in  Islam,  so  far  as  my  experience  goes,  so 
far  as  I  was  able  to  learn  at  any  point,  their 
conceptions  are  those  of  the  mystical  life. 


LECTURE   IV 

MUSLIM    THEOLOGY    AND    METAPHYSICS 

At  the  close  of  my  last  lecture  I  was  beginning 
to  open  up  slightly  the  present  subject,  that  is, 
the  religious  attitudes,  views,  ideas,  re-construc- 
tions current  amongst  the  different  classes  of 
Muslims.  I  divided  these  roughly  into  three. 
Practically  all  thinking  men  who  are  also 
religious-minded  are  mystics.  This  class  I  must 
leave  over  for  the  next  lecture.  But  that  leaves, 
second,  the  masses  of  the  people  who  are  emi- 
nently religious-minded  but  of  whom  we  cannot 
say  exactly  that  they  are  thinkers;  and,  third, 
the  great  body  of  scholastic  theologians. 

First,  then,  with  regard  to  the  masses  of  the 
people,  their  religion  is  to  a  great  extent  a 
religion  of  phrases.  I  do  not  say  this  in  any 
contemptuous  sense;  the  religion  of  all  masses 
of  people,  our  own  included,  tends  to  crystallize 
itself  in  religious  phrases.  For  example,  I  have 
here  in  my  hand  the  rosary  of  Islam.  In  this, 
its  largest  form,  it  consists  of  ninety-nine  beads, 

115 


Il6  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

in  three  divisions  of  thirty-three  each.  The 
smaller  form  consists  of  thirty-three  beads  only; 
but  what  I  have  here  is  the  more  regular  form 
in  use  today.  There  are  still  larger  forms  but 
these  are  used  by  darwishes  or  other  religious. 
Each  of  these  beads  is  dedicated  to  one  of  what 
are  called  the  ninety-nine  Most  Beautiful  Names 
of  God.  These  go  back  to  Muhammad,  follow- 
ing Arabic  usage.  All  Arabic  poetry  tends  to 
use  descriptive  epithets.  Jt  was,  therefore,  per- 
fectly natural  that  Muhammad  should  express 
his  ideas  about  Allah  by  such  names  describing 
His  qualities.  There  are  very  many  of  these 
in  the  Qur'an  and  in  the  Traditions,  or  derivable 
from  verbs  used  in  the  Qur'an,  and,  out  of  these, 
ninety-nine  have  been  taken  and  have  become 
stereotyped  for  use  in  private  devotion. 

So  the  Muslim,  as  he  walks,  uses  his  rosary, 
slipping  it  through  his  fingers,  until  he  has  gone 
through  the  ninety-nine  Names,  and  if  he  does 
not  choose  to  trouble  himself  to  remember  all 
the  names  in  exact  order,  he  will  simply  turn 
it  over,  running  it  through  his  hand,  and  murmur 
under  his  breath,  "Allah,  Allah,  Allah."  I  do 
not  know  exactly  how  much  feeling  there  goes 


MUSLIM    THEOLOGY  117 

with  that.  Certainly,  from  the  generality  of  the 
habit  and  its  fixity,  he  cannot  be  thinking  about 
things  very  different  from  those  of  the  ordinary 
circle  of  religious  thought ;  he  cannot  be  indulg- 
ing in  religious  speculation  of  any  freedom;  at 
any  rate  that  is  the  habit,  normal,  regular.  But 
religious  usages  go  further  than  such  simple 
phrases  as  these. 

I  suppose  that  for  us  to  have  some  one  read 
the  New  Testament  over  aloud  in  our  presence 
at  a  family  festivity  would  not  be  regarded  as 
exactly  an  exhilarating  amusement.  In  Islam 
it  is  different  The  reading  of  the  Qur'an  in 
that  way  by  a  professional  reader  is  listened  to 
very  gravely  by  a  circle  who  find  it  quite  enter- 
taining. It  will  make  part  of  a  holiday  for  them, 
and  when  they  wish  anything  more  wildly  excit- 
ing than  that  there  will  take  place  a  performance 
which  can  be  best  compared  to  the  Christmas 
Cantata  with  us.  It  is  carried  out  by  a  principal 
singer  with  an  assistant  chorus  of  four  voices 
and  perhaps  one  or  two  musical  instruments  of 
the  legally  permissible  kind,  and  they  go  over 
in  a  series  of  songs  and  choruses  an  account  of 
the  traditional  history  of  the  birth  of  the  Prophet. 


Il8  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

That  very  frequently  takes  place  on  the  occasion 
of  a  marriage.  A  great  tent  is  erected  in  the 
street,  outside  of  the  bridegroom's  house,  and 
there  the  singer  and  his  chorus  are  seated,  and  all 
are  welcome  to  come  and  listen;  the  family  joy 
being  expressed  in  this  way.  I  was  present  at 
one  of  these  song-recitations,  and,  having  been 
introduced  to  the  singer,  he,  out  of  the  courtesy 
of  his  heart,  sent  and  asked  whether  I  would 
like  him  to  somewhat  expurgate  the  contents 
of  this  cantata,  as  there  were  references  in  it 
to  the  end  of  the  world  and  the  state  of  things 
in  the  world  to  come  for  the  unbeliever.  He 
thought  I  might  take  it  personally,  and  would 
rather  have  such  things  cut  out.  Of  course  I 
assured  him  that  what  I  came  for  was  the  delight 
of  hearing  his  voice  and,  having  that,  did  not 
mind  in  the  least  what  w^ords  he  might  use. 

These  are  simply  illustrations  of  the  religious 
tendencies  of  the  masses  of  the  people  and  of  the 
ways  in  which  such  tendencies  show  themselves. 
I  use  these  rather  than  the  five  legal  daily  prayers 
and  the  Friday  sermon  because  they  have 
developed  themselves  more  spontaneously  and  are 
more  characteristic  of  the  natural  drift.     But  it 


MUSLIM    THEOLOGY  IIQ 

would  be  a  mistake  to  think  that  the  masses  of 
Islam  have  not  also  some  definite  theological  basis 
for  themselves  of  a  precise,  almost  a  philosophical 
kind. 

Here  I  have,  for  instance,  a  little  booklet,  very 
widely  read  and  costing  some  fraction  of  a  cent. 
It   contains   at   the   beginning  those  ninety-nine 
Most  Beautiful  Names  of  Allah,  and  then  it  goes 
on  to  give  a  series  of  suitable  prayers,  religious 
ejaculations,  moral  reflections,  extracts  from  the 
Qur'an,  etc.     But  no  one  could  go  over  it  without 
picking  out  from  it  quite  a  little  of  what  you 
might    call    philosophical     theology.      Different 
phrases  such  as  "From  all  eternity,"  "unifying," 
"if  ambiguity  have  entered  into  my  knowledge 
of  Thee,"  etc.,  are  scattered  through  it,  and  the 
ordinary  user  of  this  little  book  is  bound  to  pick 
up   and   to   understand   in   that    way   a    certain 
amount  of  the  definite  scholastic  theology. 

To  that  definite  scholastic  theology,  then,  I 
now  turn.  I  have  chosen  a  system  to  put  before 
you,  in  part  at  least — I  cannot  give  you  it  all — 
that  is  very  thorough  and  definite  indeed.  This, 
for  me,  is  the  only  sound  course,  if  you  desire  to 
understand  any  theology  at  all.     If,  for  example, 


120  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

you  want  to  understand  the  Christian  theology, 
I  do  not  see  any  escape  for  it  from  taking  up 
some  one  definite  system — that  of  Augustine  or 
Thomas  Aquinas  or  of  Calvin,  it  may  be — of  as 
thorough  a  character  as  possible,  and  working 
that  out  and  getting  to  understand  it.  There- 
after, you  can  study  and  understand  the  different 
modifications  of  it  and  easily  master  the  general 
field  of  theology.  But  for  a  basis  you  are  bound 
to  take  some  system  that  is  thoroughgoing, 
master  it  and  then  build  up  your  knowledge  of 
theology  round  it  and  its  modifications.  For 
that  purpose,  then,  I  pick  a  quite  thoroughgoing 
system  with  a  metaphysical  basis  of  a  kind. 

But  before  going  on  to  actual  theology  we 
must  first  make  sure  of  our  preliminary  training. 
That  the  Muslim  takes  very  seriously,  and  he 
has  no  opinion  at  all  of  the  metaphysical  train- 
ing of  the  Westerner.  Whenever,  for  example, 
I  began  at  any  time  to  discuss  theology  with  a 
Muslim,  the  first  thing  he  did  was  to  put  me 
through  my  paces  as  to  whether  I  was  really 
intellectually  fitted  and  had  the  necessary  prepa- 
ration to  approach  this  subject.  There  was  a 
kind  of  metaphysical  pons  asinoruni  that  had  to 


MUSLIM    THEOLOGY  121 

be  passed  before  we  could  proceed  further.  Let 
me  now  put  that  bridge  before  you.  They 
always  began  by  saying  that  there  are  three  essen- 
tial things  to  be  understood  and  distinguished. 
Unless  you  can  understand  these,  you  need  not 
go  on  any  further  with  your  study  of  theology. 
You  must  understand  what  is  meant  by  the  neces- 
sary; what  is  meant  by  the  possible;  and  what 
is  meant  by  the  impossible.  My  interlocutor 
would  either  make  me  explain  these,  or  else  he 
would  go  on  to  expound  them  himself  as  fol- 
lows : — The  necessary,  its  non-existence  cannot 
be  thought;  there  is  only  one  necessary — that 
is  Allah.  The  possible;  that  is  you  and  I — any- 
thing— the  things  of  the  world.  They  may  be 
or  may  not  be.  They  are  betwixt  and  between. 
I  still  remember  with  pride,  how  pleased  one 
theologian  was  when  I  applied  a  literal  Arabic 
translation  of  this  colloquialism.  I  had  invented 
a  new  terminus  technicus! — But  when  we  came 
to  the  impossible,  we  got  into  deep  water.  Its 
existence  cannot  be  thought.  A  thing  cannot  be 
and  not  be  at  the  same  time. 

Starting  with   that,   then,   it  was   possible   to 
go    on    and    further    develop    the    theological 


122  '  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

scheme.  But  let  me,  first,  throw  in  another  point. 
In  what  follows  you  will  be  struck,  I  am  per- 
fectly certain,  with  the  mechanical  and  concrete 
nature  of  all  the  argumentation.  The  Muslim 
reasoner  deals  with  ideas  as  If  they  were  blocks 
of  wood,  solid  things  In  your  possession,  as  to 
which  there  was  no  question  what  they  w^ere ;  you 
could  handle  them  as  you  pleased  and  move  them 
this  way  and  that.  Recognition  that  an  idea  is 
essentially  Indefinable  in  its  exactness,  and  that 
there  Is  a  biological  aspect  to  all  things  which 
makes  them  Incalculable  Is  still  far  before  them. 
They  are  still  at  the  stage  where  when  you  have 
got  an  Idea  you  know  exactly  what  It  is,  and 
you  can  play  with  It  In  any  way  you  please. 
That,  I  think,  is  best  Illustrated  by  the  system 
of  controversy — or  better,  the  system  of  ascer- 
taining truths — that  was  built  up  by  the  great 
and  the  very  successful  missionary  to  the  Mus- 
lims, Ramon  Lull.  His  system  Is  worthy  of 
careful  notice  because  It  was  really  successful  in 
its  way.  He  had  worked  out  a  method  of 
developing  all  the  possible  relationships  between 
different  ideas  in  which  substances,  attributes, 
categories   were  arranged   on  concentric  circles 


MUSLIM    THEOLOGY  I23 

of  card-board.  You  turned  those  circles  round 
and  made  various  combinations  from  card  to  card 
and  thus  got  your  result — an  infallible  result. 
Everything  was  down  upon  the  cards;  you  had 
simply  to  turn  the  wheel,  and  the  result  came 
out.  This  is  a  somewhat  crude  account  of  Lull's 
idea  of  a  logic-machine;  but  it  gives  the  point 
of  interest  to  us  now.  And  the  remarkable 
thing  is  that  Lull  was  one  of  the  few  successful 
missionaries  to  Muslims;  that  seems  certain. 
His  method  corresponded  exactly  with  their 
mental  workings,  with  their  way  of  approaching 
and  thinking  about  things.^ 

Starting  with  these  three  conceptions,  the 
necessary,  the  possible,  and  the  impossible,  the 
next  point  in  Muslim  theology  is  that  about  nine- 
tenths  of  the  space  is  taken  up  with  the  discussion 
of  the  nature  of  the  Person  of  Allah.  For 
instance,  if  there  are  fifty  articles  of  belief  in  an 
Arabic  theological  treatise,  you  may  be  perfectly 
sure  that  more  than  forty  deal  with  the  Person 

^It  is  only  fair  to  draw  attention  also  to  Ramon  Lull's 
eminence  as  a  creative  literary  artist,  with  especial  ability 
in  illustrative  apologues.  See,  on  this  side,  a  long  and 
excellent  account  of  him  by  Menendez  y  Pelayo,  in  his 
Origencs  de  la  Novela,  Vol.  I,  pp.  Ixxii  ff. 


124  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

of  Allah,  while  less  than  ten  will  be  left  for 
other  things  such  as  the  nature  of  prophecy, 
etc.  One  origin,  undoubtedly,  of  this  singular 
onesidedness  was  the  overwhelming  importance 
for  Muhammad  of  the  idea  of  Allah,  and  the 
form  which  it  took  was  conditioned  by  the 
tendency  in  Muhammad's  mind  to  characterize 
Allah  by  those  names  of  which  I  have  spoken. 
That  was  the  form  in  which  the  doctrine  of  the 
Person  of  Allah  expressed  itself  for  him,  and 
naturally  his  attitude  and  method  continued  them- 
selves in  the  succeeding  development.  But, 
further,  it  is,  I  think,  a  perfectly  fixed  historical 
fact,  that  the  development  of  Muslim  theology  was 
most  largely  conditioned  and  afifected — absolutely 
conditioned  and  affected — by  the  theology  of  the 
Greek  Church  and  especially  by  that  theology 
as  formulated  by  John  of  Damascus.  In  it  the 
doctrine  of  the  Person  of  God  is  given  a  far 
more  primary  position  and  greater  space  than 
in  the  theologies  of  the  Latin  Church,  not  to 
speak  of  the  theologies  of  the  Reformation. 
Thus  the  second  influence  worked  to  the  same 
purpose  as  the  first.  The  theologian,  in  conse- 
quence, has  to  give  by  far  the  greater  amount  of 


MUSLIM    THEOLOGY  I25 


^ 


his  space  to  statement  and  proof  of  the  qualities 
of  Allah. 

Of  these,  the  first  quality  is,  of  course,  exist- 
ence. But  what  is  existence?  Remember  that 
this  is  long  prior  to  Kant,  and  yet  one  Muslim 
school  has  come  within  a  very  measurable  dis- 
tance of  him  in  its  idea  of  the  meaning  of 
existence.  On  that  point  there  are  two  views. 
One  is  that  existence  is  a  state  belonging  to  the 
essence  of  an  entity  and  necessary  to  that  essence 
as  long  as  the  entity  shall  last.  It  is  a  personal 
quality,  you  may  say,  without  which  the  entity 
is  unthinkable,  and  it  has  no  cause,  except,  of 
course,  Allah.  That  means  that  John's  being 
strong,  for  example,  springs  from  John's  strength ; 
but  there  is  nothing  in  John  from  which  his 
existence  springs.  In  this  view  the  point  is  that 
existence  is  a  state  or  quality ;  not  the  entity  itself, 
or  its  essence;  insepaiable  from  the  entity.  But 
the  other  view  holds  'hat  existence  is  the  self 
of  the  essence  of  the  entity;  is  that  through  and 
in  which  it  is,  and  not  an  addition  to  it  externally. 
Both  of  these  views  have  been  and  are  held  in 
Islam. 

But  how  can  we  prove  that  this  quality,  namely 


126  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

existence,  belongs  to  Allah;  that  Allah  exists? 
The  proof,  in  a  word,  is  the  world  itself.  "Look 
out  upon  the  world,"  says  the  Muslim  theologian, 
"you  will  see  that  it  consists  of  bodies  and  acci- 
dents."— He  might  go  farther  back  and  speak 
of  substances  in  the  philosophical  sense,  and  some 
treatises  do  so;  but  the  great  majority  of  theo- 
logical books  begin  with  the  concrete  things 
of  the  world,  bodies. — Regard  then  the  world. 
It  consists  of  bodies  and  accidents.  Now,  the 
accidents  are  very  evidently  originated ;  they  have 
had  an  origin;  they  will  have  an  end.  This 
book,  for  example,  which  I  am  holding  is  now  at 
rest;  possesses  the  quality  or  accident  "at  rest." 
Now,  again,  it  is  in  motion.  It  has  come  to 
possess  another  quality,  "motion."  Now,  again 
it  is  at  rest.  Each  of  these  accidents,  then,  had 
evidently  an  origin.  So  ^/e  must  regard  acci- 
dents in  this  world  as  bCxUg  things  originated. 
But  they  are  always  jrmed  to  bodies.  They 
do  not  occur  separately  and,  further,  bodies  are 
inseparable  from  accidents.  Every  body  has 
accidents :  It  is  in  motion  or  at  rest ;  it  is  hot  or 
it  is  cold;  it  is  light  or  it  is  heavy.  But  what  is  ^ 
inseparable  from  originated  things  must  itself  be 


MUSLIM    THEOLOGY  12/ 

originated.  Therefore,  the  world  as  a  whole — 
bodies  and  accidents — is  originated;  had  an 
origin. 

But  what,  further,  does  that  teach  us?  If  the 
world  did  not  exist  from  all  eternity,  there  must 
have  been  an  originator.  That  is  to  say,  there 
must  have  been  some  being  who  is  the  originator 
of  this  world.  Observe  that  this  reasoning  goes 
no  further.  That  this  Originator  of  the  world 
is  to  be  called  Allah  or  given  any  of  the  Most 
Beautiful  Names  we  can  learn  from  the  prophets 
only.  There  Revelation  must  step  in.  But  tak- 
ing it  for  granted  that  this  Originator  may  be 
called  Allah,  then  the  second  quality  that  we  are 
compelled  to  assign  to  him  is  Priority.  That 
means  that  whatever  we  may  think  of  the  things 
of  the  world,  of  the  existing  entities  as  we  know 
them,  Allah  must  be  thought  of  as  being  prior 
to  them.  He  is  prior  to  everything  else  than 
himself.  You  must  think  of  him  as  before  every- 
thing. But  why  have  we  to  ascribe  this  further 
quality  to  Allah  ?  The  answer  lies  in  the  finding 
of  the  cause  for  the  world.  What  is  the  nature 
of  the  cause  to  be?  Is  it  to  be  an  absolute 
cause — that  is  to  say,  prior  to  everything  else? 


128  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

Or  can  we  take  up  any  other  possible  position 
as  to  its  nature?  In  answer,  the  MusHm  theo- 
logians say — and  this  they  borrow  from  Aristotle 
— "You  must  have  an  absolute  cause — a  first 
cause."  But  some  have  asked,  "Can  you  not 
have  an  infinite,  regressive  series  of  contingent 
causes,  dependent  causes?"  Can  we  not  say,  "Let 
A  be  the  cause  of  the  world ;  B,  the  cause  of  A ; 
C,  the  cause  of  B;  and  so  on  backwards  ad 
infinitum  f  Or,  again,  is  it  possible  to  go  round 
in  a  circle  with  regard  to  those  causes  ?  A  is  the 
cause  of  the  world;  B  is  the  cause  of  A;  A  is 
the  cause  of  B.  Those  were  the  questions  which 
the  Muslim  theologians  had  to  face.  Those  three 
possibilities  were  before  them;  but,  generally 
speaking,  in  their  treatises,  they  say  simply  that 
the  endless  chain  and  the  circle — as  they  call 
the  two — are  impossible,  and  that,  therefore,  it 
is  only  left  that  there  must  be  an  absolute  cause. 
But  when  they  do  face  the  question  of  the 
endless  chain,  let  us  see  how  it  is  proved  impos- 
sible. This  series  itself  of  contingent,  dependent 
causes,  going  back  indefinitely,  must  in  itself 
as  a  series  be  either  necessary  or  contingent.  But 
it  cannot  be  necessary  because  it  consists  of  a 


MUSLIM    THEOLOGY  I29 

series  of  contingent  causes  only,  causes  dependent 
upon  something  else.  That  would  be  to  make 
the  necessary  to  exist  through  contingents, 
which,  they  hold,  would  be  absurd.  Yet  I  con- 
fess that,  for  myself,  I  cannot  see  why  an  endless 
series  backwards  of  contingents  may  not  very 
fairly  represent  an  absolute. 

The  series  itself,  then,  being  contingent,  must 
depend  for  its  existence  on  a  cause,  must  have 
its  cause  in  something  else.  As  to  that  some- 
thing else,  there  are  four  possibilities.  It  may 
be  internal  to  the  series,  or  it  may  be  external  to 
it;  it  may  be  necessary  itself,  or  it  may  be 
only  a  contingent,  dependent  upon  something 
else.  Combining  these  you  get  four  possibilities. 
Let  us  exhaust  them. 

Internal  in  the  series  and  necessary — but  we 
have  seen  already  that  all  that  is  in  the  series  is 
the  possible,  contingent,  only.  Internal  in  the 
series  and  contingent — then  it  is  the  cause  of 
the  series ;  therefore  of  the  elements  of  the  series ; 
therefore  the  absolute  cause  of  itself.  External  to 
the  series  and  contingent — but  all  the  contingent 
causes  are  supposed  to  be  in  the  series  ex  hypoth- 
esi.  So,  as  you  see,  this  series,  if  it  is  to  be 
9 


130  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

a  possible  explanation,  must  depend  on,  go  back 
to,  something  that  is  external  to  itself  and  neces- 
sary of  existence  in  itself — that  is  to  say,  it  must 
go  back  to  our  First  Cause,  and  so  you  may  as 
well  do  without  the  series  and  go  back  to  the 
First  Cause  at  once. 

Similar  reasoning  does  away  with  the  circle. 
Inasmuch,  then,  as  it  is  proven  that  it  is  unthink- 
able to  condition  things  by  this  indefinite  chain 
of  possibilities  or  by  circular  reasoning,  we  are 
driven  to  say  that  the  cause,  the  Originator  of 
the  world,  must  also  be  Prior  to  everything  else — 
must  be  a  primary  first  cause,  necessary  in  its 
own  existence. 

The  third  quality  is  that  of  Continuance.  It 
follows,  of  course,  necessarily.  If  there  could 
be  a  time,  away  in  the  future,  at  which  Allah 
hypothetically  did  not  exist,  then  the  existence 
of  Allah  would  be  only  possible,  that  is,  he  would 
be  originated.  But  we  have  already  seen  that 
he  is  prior  to  everything,  the  originator  of  every- 
thing. We  have,  therefore,  to  consider  that  this 
being  that,  so  far,  we  have  called  Allah,  is  prior 
to  everything,  continuing  indefinitely. 

But  the  fourth  quality  Is  the  most  character- 


f  MUSLIM    THEOLOGY  I3I 

istic  element  in  the  whole  Muslim  scheme.  This 
being,  whom  we  are  defining,  step  by  step,  must 
possess  also  the  quality  of  Difference.  That  is, 
he  must  be  different  from  all  other  beings.  If 
he  could  be  described  in  terms  of  other  beings, 
which  means  in  terms  of  originated  things — for 
all  beings  except  himself  are  originated — he  would 
be  an  originated  thing.  Therefore,  it  must  he 
impossible  to  use  of  him  the  terms  and  descriptions 
that  can  he  used  of  originated  heings.  That 
is  a  fundamental  theological  position.  Yet  'it 
threatens,  in  a  sense,  to  cut  away  the  possibility 
of  any  theology.  What,  especially,  is  the  Mus- 
lim to  do  with  the  descriptions  of  Allah  in  the 
Qur'an  ?  What  with  the  ninety-nine  Most  Beauti- 
ful Names?  That  problem  has  been  approached 
in  different  ways  and  different  solutions  have 
been  found.  Some  held  that  we  must  take  these 
expressions  literally,  as  they  stand,  and  swallow 
the  theological  difficulty  that  they  thus  raise. 
These  were  frank  anthropomorphists.  Others 
said  that  these  expressions  could  not  be  taken  in 
the  first,  material  sense;  that  the  w^ords  were  to 
be  explained  differently.  These  were  on  the  way 
to  recognize  the  existence  of  anthropomorphisms. 


132  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM  } 

Others  held  them  to  be  mysteries;  you  are 
bound  to  use  those  names  and  descriptions  and 
expressions  in  speaking  of  Allah;  but  you  must 
not  attach  any  meaning  to  them  such  as  could  be 
attached  to  them  when  used  of  men. 

One  technical  phrase  arose  very  early  in  the 
development  of  Muslim  theology  and  maintained 
itself  very  long.  It  is  this:  Without^_enquiring 
how  and  without  comparison.  For  example,  the 
Qur'an  in  seven  different  places  (vii,  52;  x,  3; 
xiii,  2;  XX,  2;  XXV,  60;  xxxii,  3;  Ivii,  4)  says 
that  Allah  settled  himself  firmly  upon  his  throne. 
The  phrase  used  is  exactly  the  phrase  used  of  a 
man  when  he  adjusts  himself  carefully  upon  his 
camel-saddle  (e.  g.  in  Qur.  xliii,  12).  What 
does  that  mean  when  used  of  Allah?  The 
anthropomorphic  exegetes  said  quite  frankly,  *Tt 
means  that  Allah  did  take  his  seat  upon  his 
throne  in  exactly  that  way.  That  is  the  word  of 
the  Qur'an."  Some  theologians  even  wrote  above 
the  door  of  their  mosques  the  seven  texts  in  the 
Qur'an,  given  above,  describing  how  Allah  settled 
himself  upon  his  throne.  It  was  their  challenge 
to  the  world,  "We  believe  that  what  these 
verses  say  of  Allah  is  literally  true."     Another 


MUSLIM    THEOLOGY  I33 

used  defiantly  to  rise  up  and  sit  down  and  say, 
**Thus  did  Allah  settle  himself  upon  his  throne." 
Another  school  of  exegetes  held  that  these 
expressions  were  to  be  explained  as  metaphors  of 
different  kinds.  One  theologian,  for  example, 
when  he  read  in  the  Qur'an  about  the  foot  or  the 
hand  or  the  face  of  Allah,  hunted  in  his  diction- 
ary until  he  found  some  possible  secondary  mean- 
ing of  these  Arabic  words  which  could  be  taken 
non-materially,  and  said  that  that  must  have  been 
what  was  meant. 

But  the  normal  position  which  Islam  has 
reached  is  expressed  in  the  phrase.  Without 
enquiring  how  and  without  comparison.  The 
meaning  of  these  expressions  is  not  to  be  asked. 
How  Allah  can  be  and  do  such  things  you  must 
leave  alone,  and,  above  all,  you  must  not  make 
any  comparison  between  Allah  and  men.  You 
must  not  think  that  anything  which  Allah  does 
is  really  measurable  in  terms  of  our  thought. 
That  is  where  the  doctrine  of  the  Difference  of 
Allah  essentially  comes  in. 

And  so  here  is  the  end  of  the  matter.  When, 
for  example,  the  Qur'an  says  that  Allah  is  the 
Most  Merciful  of  those  that  show  mercy  (Qur. 


134  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

vii,  150;  xii,  64,  92;  xxi,  83),  you  must  not 
by  any  chance  imagine  that  that  involves  in  him 
the  quaHty  of  mercy  as  we  understand  it.  That 
the  theologians  prove  in  a  very  direct,  inhumanly 
direct,  manner.  Look  around  you  in  the  world. 
Does  it  strike  you  that  the  world  is  being  gov- 
erned by  the  Most  Merciful  of  those  who  show 
mercy? — Muslim  theology,  you  will  observe,  is 
thoroughgoing.  Here  it  is  certainly  taking 
Providence  by  the  throat  with  a  vengeance. — 
Consider  the  case  of  innocent  children.  They  are 
afflicted  with  all  kinds  of  diseases.  How  could 
that  be  if  "the  Most  Merciful  of  those  that  show 
mercy"  meant  that  Allah  possessed  the  quality 
of  mercy  as  we  understand  it  ?  Evidently  it  can 
not.  Allah  has  simply  given  that  phrase  in  the 
Qur'an  as  one  of  his  names,  and  what  he  meant 
by  it  we  do  not  know.  We  may  call  him  by 
that  name ;  we  may  not  draw  any  conclusion  from 
it.  The  same  argument  has  been  used,  I  believe, 
by  some  Christian  theologians. 

Further,  the  fifth  quality  that  must  be  in  Allah 
is  Self-subsistence.  We  cannot  think  of  him  as 
being  in  any  need  of  a  locus  or  subject,  in  which 
to  exist;  nor  can  we  think  of  him  as  being  in 


MUSLIM    THEOLOGY  135 

need  of  a  specifier,  some  one  who  will  specify  him, 
define  him  in  this  way  and  not  in  any  other. 
That  would  mean  either  that  he  is  a  quality,  if 
he  stood  in  need  of  a  locus  or  subject;  or  that 
he  is  originated,  if  he  stood  in  need  of  a  specifier. 

Then,  sixthly,  there  comes  another  curious  and 
very  significant  quality.  We  are  compelled  to 
believe  that  this  being  whom  we  have  called  Allah 
is  the  Originator  of  the  world;  the  Prior,  the 
Continuing,  the  Different,  the  Self-subsisting. 
Now  we  must  learn  that  this  being  is  also  One; 
that  he  possesses  the  quality  Unity.  But  there 
are  two  kinds  of  unity:  there  is  internal  unity, 
unity  within  the  being;  and  there  is  external 
unity,  i.  e.  there  is  no  other  being  like  this  being. 
Further,  there  is  another,  a  three-fold  division: 
there  is  unity  in  essence ;  unity  in  qualities ;  unity 
in  acts;  the  first  two  of  these  divide  also  into 
internal  and  external. 

First,  to  take  the  unity  necessary  in  qualities. 
That  means,  internally,  that  there  are  not  two 
qualities  called  Priority,  say,  in  Allah.  That, 
I  think,  you  will  probably  admit.  Externally,  it 
means  that  no  one  possesses  a  quality  like  any 
quality   of  Allah.     Next,   the  unity   in  essence. 


136  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

Take  the  Internal  unity  first :  I  shall  return  to  the 
external.  Is  it  necessary  to  believe  that  the 
essence  of  Allah  must  possess  internal  unity? 
Now,  I  am  bound  to  say  that  in  the  ordinary  theo- 
logical treatises  at  least,  this  is  not  really  made 
out.  The  other  things  are  simple  enough — the 
unity  in  qualities;  the  unity  in  acts;  the  external 
unity.  But  so  far  as  I  have  gone,  I  do  not  find 
a  really  satisfactory  proof  in  Muslim  theology 
that  the  essence  of  Allah  must  be  an  internal 
unity.  I  do  not  see,  that  is  to  say,  that  they 
have  logically  disproven  the  possibility  in  Allah 
of  the  Christian  Trinity,  even  if  we  regard  that 
as  meaning  a  division  in  essence. 

However,  let  us  turn  now  to  the  unity  in 
acts.  That  does  not  mean — and  the  theologians 
are  always  careful  to  make  this  clear — that  does 
not  mean  that  no  created  being  possesses  an  act 
like  Allah.  It  means — and  this  is  where  the 
sweeping  nature  of  it  comes  in — that  no  other 
being  than  Allah  possesses  any  act  at  all — any  ,- 
act  at  all  From  Allah  and  of  Allah  are  all 
acts.  In  no  sense  can  it  be  said  when,  for 
example,  I  lift  this  book,  that  that  act  belongs 
to  me.     How,  then,  does  the  Muslim  theologian 


MUSLIM    THEOLOGY  1 37 

of  this  thoroughgoing  school  regard  the  matter? 
He  regards  the  world  and  all  the  events  in  the 
world  as  a  perpetual  miracle — a  miracle  always 
and  constantly  going  on.  It  is  not  only  that,  by  a 
creative  miracle,  the  world  was  brought  into 
existence;  it  is  not  only  that,  by  an  overseeing 
Providence,  the  world  is  maintained  in  existence; 
but  all  through  the  existence  of  the  world — from 
moment  to  moment — there  is  this  miraculous 
creation  going  on.  What  happens,  from  this 
point  of  view,  when,  for  example,  I  lift  this  book? 
It  is  quite  a  complicated  thing  that  happens,  an 
involved  process.  There  are  a  great  many  crea- 
tions by  Allah  during  that  process.  First  of  all, 
the  book  is  lying  there.  From  moment  to 
moment  as  it  lies  it  is  being  recreated,  or,  at 
least,  retained  in  existence  by  the  direct,  personal 
working  of  Allah.  When  I  lift  it,  as  I  do  now, 
what  happens?  Allah  has  created  in  me  the 
will  to  lift  it.  He  has  created  in  me  the  move- 
ment of  my  hand,  and  he  has  created  in  the 
book — you  cannot  say  a  movement  but,  rather, 
a  series  of  books,  as  it  goes  up  on  its  way 
until  it  lands  here.  You  see,  we  have  in  this 
scheme  not  only  an  atomic  system  of  matter; 


138  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

we  have  also,  and  this  is  the  most  curious  device 
of  the  MusHm  metaphysicians,  an  atomic  system 
for  time.     Let  me  illustrate  this  last  idea.  n 

Listen  to  the  tick  of  a  clock  with  a  very  short 
pendulum,  and  imagine  that  for  each  tick  there 
Is  a  new  creation  of  everything.  So  we  perceive 
changes  and  action  in  the  constant  flux  of  these 
creations.  Or  it  is  very  much  like  the  movement, 
in  a  sense,  of  a  cinematograph  which  contains 
so  many  pictures,  and  these  are  flitting  past  so 
rapidly  that  we  are  given  the  impression  of  a 
thing  happening.  Allah,  in  the  same  way,  cre- 
ates everything  in  such  a  rapid,  unending  series, 
and  he  creates  it  in  each  new  condition,  situation, 
fashion,  required  by  the  changes  of  this  world. 
So  the  movement  of  my  hand  to  take  hold  of 
this  book,  its  movement  up  with  the  book,  the 
movement  of  the  book  itself  upwards,  all  involve 
a  series — rapid  of  course — Invisible — of  miracu- 
lous creations  directly  by  Allah. 

But  you  may  ask  what  would  happen  if  Allah 
were  to  remove  his  ever  re-creating  hand.  On 
that  Islam  had  two  hypotheses.  One  was  that 
the  world  would  stop,  frozen  in  the  attitude  and 
state  of  a  moment,  and  so  remain  until  Allah 


MUSLIM    THEOLOGY  139 

grasped  it  again.  The  other,  and  to  my  mind 
the  more  logical,  was  that  it  would  at  once  drop 
out  of  existence  into  nothingness.  With  other 
details — for  example,  the  size  of  an  atom  of  time, 
are  such  atoms  in  contact?  and  the  like — I  cannot 
now  deal. 

You  see  at  once  the  consequences  that  follow 
from  this.  There  can,  of  course,  be  no  such 
thing  as  nature.  When  fire  burns  or  when  a 
knife  cuts,  that  Is  not  by  any  nature  in  the  fire 
or  quality  in  the  knife.  The  cutting  and  the 
being  cut,  the  burning  and  the  being  burned  are 
all  by  Allah.  The  burning  and  its  direct  effects 
are  the  direct  creation  of  Allah. ^ 

And  further,  here  is  one  point  which  I  omitted. 
According  to  the  Ash'arites,  the  dominant  school 
of  Muslim  theologians,  Allah  also  creates  in  my 
mind,  when  I  do  anything,  an  acceptance  by 
myself  of  the  doing  of  it.  Of  this  doctrine  of 
^'acceptance"    the    theologians    of    other    schools 

^  There  is  a  confession  and  exposition  of  much  the  same 
view  in  Mr.  G.  K.  Chesterton's  Orthodoxy,  Chap.  IV,  "The 
Ethics  of  Elfland."  And  the  links  of  descent  are  clear. 
They  are  two  and  go  back  through  Thomas  Aquinas  and 
Pascal  to  the  Pugio  Fidei  of  Ramon  Marti,  a  student  of 
al-Ghazzali.  Mr,  Chesterton,  like  a  great  many  other  ex- 
cellent people,  is  an  unwitting  Ghazzalian. 


140  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

have  made  a  great  deal  of  solemn  fun.  But 
what  did  al-Ash'ari  mean  by  It?  As  far  as  I 
can  see,  It  Is  really  an  attempt  by  him  to  explain 
why  we  think  we  are  free.  God  has  created  in 
our  minds,  along  with  the  purpose  and  along 
with  the  action,  the  feeling  that  we  are  doing 
it  ourselves. 

But  what  of  the  external  unity  In  essence? 
Is  it  unthinkable  that  there  might  exist  some 
other  being  like  Allah  In  essence  and  equal  to 
him?  Why  must  we  think  that  the  being  that 
we  have  built  up  in  this  fashion  must  be  One, 
externally?  The  answer  to  this  Is  that  If  there 
were  two  beings,  they  would  either  agree  or  they 
would  disagree  in  what  they  wanted  to  do.  If 
they  disagreed,  to  take  that  first,  then,  either  they 
would  counterbalance  each  other,  being  equally 
strong,  and  nothing  would  be  done ;  or  one  would 
be  weaker  and  would  practically  push  aside  the 
other.  That  would  mean  that  he  was  more  than 
equal  to  the  other,  and  they  were,  ex  hypothesi, 
to  be  equal.  But  suppose  they  agreed.  Then 
the  Muslim  theologian  lays  it  down  that  two 
things  cannot  make  an  impression,  one  impress- 
ion, at  the  same  time.     You  stamp  a  piece  of 


MUSLIM   THEOLOGY  I4I 

wax  with  a  seal.  You  cannot  make,  at  the  same 
time,  the  same  impression  upon  the  same  bit  of 
wax  with  two  seals.  So,  even  if  the  two  beings 
did  agree,  their  working  together  would  be  impos- 
sible. In  this  way,  then,  it  is  proven  that  Allah 
must  be  a  Unity. 

But,  again,  let  me  say  that,  so  far  as  I  know, 
it  is  still  possible  for  the  Christian  controver- 
sialist to  maintain  that  it  is  not  yet  proven  that 
the  essence  of  Allah  must  be  an  internal  unity. 
Also  the  question  might  be  raised  whether  we  are 
not  compelled  to  go  on  and  ascribe  to  Allah 
internal  unity  in  acts  also.  That  would  be  that 
Allah  possesses  only  one  act,  and  comes  perilously 
close  to  the  philosophical  position  that  Allah 
knows  universals  only. 

I  have  now  put  before  you  six  of  those  neces- 
sary qualities  in  Allah.  There  are  other  four- 
teen necessary  and  then  twenty  impossible;  but 
I  will  not  inflict  these  upon  you.  And  beyond 
these  is  the  great  possibility,  in  the  case  of  Allah, 
that  every  logically  possible  thing  is  open  to  him, 
while  nothing  is  incumbent  upon  him.  This  is 
the  great  possibility  for  man  as  well,  for  it  means 
that  every  slightest  element  in  the  life  of  man 


142  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

is  absolutely  in  the  hand  of  Allah.  When  com- 
bined with  the  doctrine  of  Allah's  Difference,  it 
reaches  religious  nihilism,  or  rather  anarchy. 
There  is  no  unity  in  the  world,  moral  or  physical 
or  metaphysical;  all  hangs  from  the  individual 
will  of  Allah.  Of  course,  this  is  the  doctrine 
of  philosophizing  theologians ;  the  people  of  Islam 
have  always,  if  unconsciously,  known  better. 

This  curious,  concrete,  mechanical  attitude  in 
theological  reasoning  must  now  be  tolerably  clear 
to  you.  But,  of  course,  behind  this,  which  is 
the  system  of  the  scholastic  theologians,  there 
lies,  as  I  have  already  indicated,  a  real  metaphys- 
ical system.  The  metaphysics  do  not  become 
prominent  except  when  you  come  to  the  Unity 
of  Allah.  But  throughout  there  is  thought  behind 
the  theology.  You  may  say  that  in  Arabic  there 
are  two  systems  of  philosophy.  One  of  them 
is  a  very  curious  compound  of  Aristotelianism 
and  Neo-Platonism.  The  compound  was  rendered 
possible  by  one  of  the  most  epoch-making  of 
pseudographs,  a  quite  overwhelming  bit  of  liter- 
ary mischief.  Sometime  or  other  in  the  ninth 
century,  A.  D.,  a  Syrian  Christian  of  Emessa 
took  parts  of  the  "Enneads"  of  Plotinus,  trans- 


MUSLIM    THEOLOGY  143 

lated  them  into  Arabic  and  called  them  "The 
Theology  of  Aristotle."  The  Muslims  took  this 
audacity  quite  solemnly.  Here  there  was  a  solu- 
tion at  last  of  the  century-old  problem.  The 
labour  of  reconciling  Aristotle  and  Plato,  on 
which  the  great  Greeks  themselves  had  spent  so 
many  generations,  was  accomplished  by  the 
stroke  of  an  oriental  pen.  If  this  w^as  the 
theology  of  Aristotle,  the  final,  absolute  basis 
of  his  system,  why  then  he  and  Plato  practically 
came  together,  and  came  together  in  a  Neo-Pla- 
tonic  form.  In  consequence  it  is  a  very  hard 
thing  now  to  tell  with  regard  to  any  Arabic 
writer  upon  philosophy  whether  he  is  more  an 
Aristotelian  or  a  Platonist. 

But,  of  course,  the  Muslim  theologians  who 
wanted  to  get  a  bottom  to  their  faith  could  not 
accept  any  position  of  that  kind.  It  led  them 
too  directly  to  pantheism.  It  is  true  that  they, 
though  they  knew  it  not,  were  bound  for  the  same 
goal  from  another  side.  Their  absolute,  per- 
sonified Will,  from  which  all  things  depend,  was 
leading  them  to  a  monism  In  which  nothing  but 
that  very  personal  Will  had  any  real  existence 
and  of  which  the  material  world  was  a  mere 


144  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

passing  dream.  But  to  that  their  eyes  were 
holden.  So  they  worked  out  the  system  that 
I  have  already  put  before  you,  that  strange 
development  of  the  atomic  philosophy,  in  which 
you  have  not  only  the  atoms  of  matter  but  have 
also  the  atoms  of  time  passing  like  the  tick  of 
a  clock — change,  change,  change — and  behind  it 
all,  creating  it  all,  conditioning  it  all,  the  Will 
of  Allah.  They  did  not  need  to  introduce  the 
Lucretian  conception  of  some  mysterious  deflec- 
tion of  atoms  raining  through  the  void,  and 
making  possible  their  coming  together  into  forms. 
They  did  not  need  any  pre-established  harmony 
nor  self-developing  monads  of  Leibnitz.  The 
Will  of  Allah  continually  produced  those  atoms, 
continually  reproduced  them,  continually  combined 
them  into  forms,  and  so  the  world  kept  rising, 
shifting,  changing.  This  is  the  true  metaphysic 
of  Islam.  The  original  contribution  of  the  Mus- 
lim people  to  philosophy  was  not  in  their  taking 
up  and  passing  on  Aristotle  and  Plato.  In  that 
they  were  but  blundering  pupils  and  unfaithful 
transmitters.  'It  lay  really  in  this  grotesque,  it 
may  be,  but  still  tremendously  thorough  concep- 
tion and  application  of  the  atomic  scheme. 


<:> 


LECTURE  V 

THE  MYSTICAL  LIFE  AND  THE  DARWISH 

FRATERNITIES 

In  beginning  such  a  lecture  as  this,  I  am  com- 
pelled by  the  situation  itself  to  ask  first,  What  is 
mysticism?  In  spite  of  a  fair  unity  of  thought 
on  the  subject,  the  expression  "mysticism"  is 
still  used  in  some  very  curious  and  divergent 
ways.  But  Islam,  for  its  part,  in  its  use  of  the 
different  Arabic  terms  which  apply  to  our  present 
subject,  has  always  been  exceedingly  precise  as  to 
what  it  meant  thereby,  as  to  what  lay  behind 
those  terms  for  its  thought. 

I  presume  that  we  shall  all  agree  that  the  basis 
for  religion,  viewed  broadly,  is  three-fold.  There 
is  tradition — what  we  have  learned  from  our 
fathers;  what  has  been  taught  us  under  a  great 
many  different  forms  and  in  a  great  many  differ- 
ent ways.  There  is  reason — by  which  we  reach 
truth  for  ourselves  under  guidance  of  our  own 
intellects.  And  there  is  also — though  Christian- 
ity has  not  always  recognized  this  basis  very 
10  145 


146  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

fully  and  clearly — there  is  also  what  Quakers 
have  called  the  Inner  Light,  a  spiritual  insight 
which  does  not  come  from  without,  which  you 
cannot  ascribe  to  the  operations  of  reason  but 
which  comes  immediately,  of  itself  apparently, 
into  the  soul  or  into  the  mind,  whichever  term 
you  choose  to  employ. 

Now,  Islam  recognizes  all  three  of  these  bases. 
It  recognizes  tradition  as  a  trustworthy  source; 
that  a  doctrine  has  been  handed  down  from  the 
fathers  is  In  itself  enough  to  gain  recognition 
for  it  and  that  to  a  degree  which,  I  suppose,  for 
us  is  passing  away.  We  feel  constantly  the 
necessity  of  working  out  our  ideas  for  ourselves 
in  one  way  or  another;  the  doctrine  must  com- 
mend itself  to  us.  Islam  does  not  feel  that  but 
is  prepared  to  give  full  weight  to  what  it  has 
been  taught.  A  pedigree  legitimates  a  doctrine. 
That,  of  course.  Is  part  of  the  general  Semitic 
inheritance.  But  Islam  always  recognizes,  also, 
the  value,  in  reaching  or  in  defining  religious 
truths,  that  lies  in  reason,  although  with  very 
curious  limitations. 

In  the  earlier  generations  of  Islam  reason  had 
a  hard  fight  for  its  existence,  at  that  time  against 


THE   MYSTICAL   LIFE  147 

tradition.  In  the  later  generations  of  Islam, 
when  reason  had  been  admitted,  after  a  fashion, 
as  a  trustworthy  source  of  religious  knowledge 
by  what  you  might  call  the  orthodox  or  syste- 
matic theological  party,  it  had  to  enter  upon 
another  fight  and  again  for  its  existence.  It  had 
to  fight  against  what  was  agnosticism  of  the  most 
absolute,  if  not  scepticism  in  the  precise  sense. 
In  my  last  lecture  I  put  before  you  a  part,  at 
least,  of  the  creed  of  the  dogmatic  theologian  in 
Islam,  and  you  will  have  noticed  how  carefully 
it  was  reasoned  from  point  to  point;  with  what 
infallible  linking  of  proof  to  proof  it  moved.  But 
I  am  bound  now  to  tell  you  that  these  argumenta- 
tions have  been  recognized  by  other  Muslim 
thinkers  as  distinctly  fallacious.  They  have  not 
hesitated  to  find  breaks  in  the  chain  of  reasoning, 
to  show  that  such  reasonings  can  never  be  an 
absolutely  trustworthy  foundation  for  religion. 

I  do  not  purpose  now  to  go  into  the  different 
breaks  that  have  been  found  in  the  links  of  the 
dogmatic  chain.  One  only  is  worth  putting  be- 
fore you.  This  critical,  reasoning  party  in  the 
Muslim  Church  recognized  that  even  what  seems 
so  primary  a  necessity  of  our  thought  as  a  prin- 


148  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

ciple  of  causation,  could  not  be  relied  upon,  was 
not  really  given  in  the  facts  before  us.  They 
said,  "When  you  think  that  you  see  causation,  all 
that  you  really  see  is  one  thing  and  then  another 
thing.  How  do  you  know  that  the  one  is  the 
cause  of  the  other?  Can  you  really  see  the  one 
producing  the  other?  Are  you  not  imposing  an 
imaginary  explanation  upon  what  you  see?" — 
And  the  dogmatic  theologians  had  themselves  be- 
gun this  cutting  of  the  nexus  of  causation  by 
their  explanation  of  every  event  as  an  immediate 
working  of  the  divine  will. — With  that  and  with 
other  such  criticisms,  a  party  in  the  Muslim 
Church  cut  clear  away  the  foundations  of  dog- 
matic theology  as  based  upon  reason. 

What  use,  then,  did  they  find  for  reason?  Its 
use,  they  found,  was  to  demonstrate  that  it  was 
not  of  any  use.  They  went  through  exactly  the 
process  that  Hamilton,  followed  by  Mansel,  went 
through  in  our  fathers'  times.  They  proved 
most  satisfactorily  that  the  finite,  the  limited,  the 
conditioned  can  never  deal  with  the  infinite,  the  o 
unlimited,  the  unconditioned;  can  really  know 
nothing  about  it.  They  cut  away  the  possibility 
of  dealing  with  religion  by  means  of  reason;  but 


THE   MYSTICAL   LIFE  149 

then  they  did  not  do  as  our  generation  tends  to 
do,  fall  back  from  this  position  into  one  absolutely 
agnostic  with  regard  to  religion.  They  did  not 
say,  ''So  it  follows  that  you  do  not  and  cannot 
know  anything  about  religion."  They  fell  back 
partly  upon  tradition,  but  still  more  upon  the 
third  basis,  the  Inner  Light.  Their  minds  were 
so  constructed  that  they  could  not  stop  at  the 
point  of  ignorance.  They  could  not  say,  "Rea- 
son can  only  prove  negatives  and  therefore  we 
can  know  nothing."  They  used  reason  to  cut 
away  the  possibility  of  philosophizing  about  the 
world  and  about  life,  and,  then,  having  driven 
philosophy  off  the  field  and  any  possibilities  on 
that  side,  they  fell  back  upon  what  their  fathers 
had  told  them  and  upon  what  came  to  them  in 
their  own  religious  experience.  That  last,  then, 
has  come  to  be  really  the  ultimate,  the  final  basis 
for  all  thoughtful  religion  in  Islam.  With  us 
what  is  called  the  Inner  Light  has  appeared  here 
and  there,  in  one  form  and  another,  at  one  time 
and  another;  but  it  has  never,  for  the  general 
body  of  Christendom,  been  the  dominant  element 
in  the  basis  of  the  faith.  In  Islam  that  position 
has  been  reached. 


150  ASPECTS    OF    islam: 

So  much,  then,  for  mysticism  in  its  meaning 
for  the  MusHm.  It  is  the  knowledge  of  religious 
things  that  comes  directly,  immediately,  to  the 
individual  soul,  apart  from  any  tradition,  apart 
from  any  reasoning.  It  comes,  they  say  them- 
selves, as  the  light  comes.  It  falls  upon  the  sur- 
face of  the  soul  as  the  rays  of  the  sun  fall  upon 
a  wall,  and  there  it  is  received. 

Next  as  to  the  exponents  of  this  mystical  atti- 
tude. The  vehicles  of  the  religious  life  asso- 
ciated with  the  mystical  attitude  are  to  be  found 
in  what  are  called  the  darwish  fraternities;  prac- 
tically amongst  them,  that  is ;  although,  of  course, 
also,  more  widely  amongst  men  who  are  not 
especially  associated  with  darwishes  and  who 
might,  perhaps,  hesitate  to  become  darwishes,  but 
who  are  still  mystics.  But,  In  the  broad  fact, 
the  darwish  fraternites  carry  on  this  religiously 
important  phase  of  life  in  Islam. 

It  was  as  a  consequence  of  this,  I  suppose,  that 
during  my  wanderings  in  the  East  I  found  that 
by  far  the  most  accessible  people — accessible 
without  needing  to  become  formally  acquainted 
— were  the  Franciscans  and  the  darwishes.  Mem- 
bers of  both  of  those  bodies  received  me  at  once. 


THE   MYSTICAL   LIFE  I5I 

They  needed  no  introduction;  they  simply  began 
to  talk  about  religious  things  and  to  enter  into 
some  kind  of  communication.  Especially,  per- 
haps I  might  say,  did  this  hold  true  of  the  dar- 
wishes.  This  was  not  an  isolated  experience;  I 
met  it  again  and  again;  and  I  have  heard  the 
same  fact  commented  upon  with  some  surprise 
by  missionaries;  they  were  astonished  that  they 
found  it  so  possible,  nay  so  easy,  to  get  along  with 
the  darwishes  in  their  own  districts.  If  they  had 
considered  that  the  fundamental  thing  in  the 
religious  life  of  the  darwishes  was  simply  this, 
the  mystical  attitude,  and  that  this  mystical  atti- 
tude is  common  to  all  mankind,  they  would  have 
found  the  solution  of  what,  I  know,  has  puzzled 
a  good  many. 

But  in  spite  of  all  that,  with  this  unity  of  the 
mystical  life  as  their  basis,  they  are  also  divided 
into  separate  bodies  which,  curiously  enough,  are 
very  shy  of  one  another.  I  have  met  with  warn- 
ings by  one  body  of  darwishes,  or  by  men  who 
were  not  darwishes,  against  having  too  much  to 
do  with  another  body.  There  was  one  instance 
which  puzzles  me  to  this  day.  When  I  was 
approaching  the  monastery  of  the  Qadirites  near 


152  ASPECTS   OF   ISLAM 

the  Qasr  al-'aini  hospital  on  the  banks  of  the  Nile, 
a  man  shouted  out  to  me,  *'He" — meaning  my 
companion,  a  humble  lay  brother — ''is  a  darwish,'* 
and  this  was  evidently  spoken  in  a  tone  of  warn- 
ing. My  companion  looked  very  sheepish  at 
that,  and  I  confess  I  have  not  been  able  to  puzzle 
out  what  was  meant. 

On  another  occasion,  when  I  intended  to  visit 
a  Mawlawite  monastery  in  the  heart  of  Cairo,  a 
very  respectable  old  man  stopped  me  and  began 
to  remonstrate  with  me  seriously,  saying  that 
these  were  not  good  people,  that  I  would  find  a 
monastery  of  good  darwishes  further  down  the 
street,  which  meant  that  the  first  had  no  connec- 
tion with  the  fraternity  of  darwishes  of  which  he 
approved.  There  is  one  fraternity  of  darwishes, 
the  Bektashites,  that  is  represented  by  a  single 
monastery  only  in  the  whole  of  Egypt.  It  lies 
at  the  entrance  to  a  very  curious  cave,  penetrating 
deep  into  the  Muqattam  hills,  and  is  perched 
there  high  up  among  the  rocks.  The  cave  is  cer- 
tainly an  old  quarry,  but  in  local  belief  it  was  the 
work  of  the  jinn  who  were  compelled  to  cut  it 
out  by  a  certain  saint.  His  object  was  to  pro- 
vide a  tunnel  to  Mecca;  but  he  died  when  only 


THE   MYSTICAL   LIFE  153 

SO  much  was  accomplished.  At  present  It  is  used 
partly  as  a  cemetery  by  the  brethren.  They,  I 
think,  are  all  Turks  and  Albanians  with  no 
Egyptians  or  Syrians.  I  found  in  time  that  they 
were  regarded  by  the  other  fraternities  in  Cairo 
with  the  gravest  suspicion ;  they  were  not  of  their 
kind. 

But  I  am  bound  to  say  that  In  the  case  of  all 
of  these  I  was  received  with  the  greatest  hospital- 
ity. They  were  all  prepared  to  talk  on  religious 
matters.  The  point  of  difficulty  between  them  is 
really  this.  The  different  fraternities  are  of 
varying  degrees  of  orthodoxy  and  moral  strict- 
ness. The  Qadirites,  for  example,  are  ordinary 
Sunnite  Muslims,  as  is  almost  the  whole  popula- 
tion of  Egypt.  They  are  thus  upon  the  same 
basis  of  faith  and  religious  observance  as  the  rest 
of  Egypt.  The  Mawlawites,  on  the  other  hand, 
are  supposed  to  be  tinged  with  pantheism  and 
antinomianism  and  other  kinds  of  isms  that  plain 
Muslims  find  objectionable;  they  are,  therefore, 
more  or  less  under  a  ban  in  Egypt.  But  in 
Turkey,  where  they  are  much  more  at  home  and 
where  is  the  great  majority  of  their  fraternity 
houses,  they  are  not  under  a  ban  at  all ;  they  are 


154  ASPECTS   OF   ISLAM 

regarded  with  favour;  they  belong  to  the  coun- 
try. As  for  the  Bektashites,  they  are  viewed 
with  suspicion  everywhere,  both  of  their  creed 
and  of  their  conduct  and,  while  I  do  not  believe 
at  all  in  the  stories  told  of  their  immoral  orgies 
— much  like  those  told  of  the  early  Christians 
and  of  which  the  East  is  full — yet  it  is  probable 
that  they  are  Muslims  in  name  only. 

The  differences,  then,  which  I  found,  seemed 
to  be  mainly  in  the  degree  of  orthodoxy;  but 
under  them  all  there  lies  the  mystical  basis,  the 
spiritual  life  guided  by  the  Inner  Light. 

I  have  spoken  of  this  Inner  Light  as  being  the 
one  thing  that  is  absolutely  common  to  the  re- 
ligious life  of  all  mankind.  You  may  ask,  "Is 
its  bond  of  community  strong  enough  for  it  to  be 
possible  for  Christians  to  become  members  of  any 
of  these  darwish  fraternities;  or  is  the  separatist 
element  of  Islam  still  so  strong  in  them  as  to 
render  that  impossible?"  I  must  confess  that 
when  I  tried  to  find  out  the  facts  in  regard  to 
this  point,  I  got  only  the  most  contradictory  re- 
sults. Of  course,  if  you  take  what  is  laid  down 
in  theological  books,  it  would  be  plainly  impos- 
sible for  any  one  not  a  Muslim  to  become  a  mem- 


THE   MYSTICAL   LIFE  155 

ber  of  any  of  these  fraternities.     But  when  you 
begin  to  ask  individuals  about  the  actual  usage  of 
the  particular  fraternities  themselves,  your  results 
become  difficult  and  mixed.     For  example,  one 
man,  a  Syrian  Christian  and  the  editor  of  one  of 
the  most  important  newspapers  in  Cairo,  told  me 
that  there  was  a  certain  fraternity,  the  Mirghan- 
ite,  the  predominant  one  in  the  Sudan,  which  was 
quite  prepared   to   accept    Christians;  that   they 
would  put  no  bar  in  their  way;  and  that  there 
was  nothing  in  their  ritual  to  prevent  a  Christian 
from  using  it.     The  French  scholars  in  Algeria 
have  been  told  the  same  thing  about  fraternities 
there.     But,  on  the  other  hand,  when  I  put  the 
question  to  the  Shaykh  al-Bekri  in  Cairo,  who  is 
the  legal  head  of  all  the  darwish  fraternities  in 
Egypt,  he  had  no  hesitation  in  replying  at  once 
that  it  was  impossible  for  any  one  not  a  Muslim 
to  enter  into  any  relationship  with  these  frater- 
nities.    But,   again,   when  I   reached   Constanti- 
nople and  began  to  ask  particularly  about  the 
attitude  of  the  Bektashites,  supposed  to  be  about 
the  broadest  sect  of  all  there,  I  was  told  by  one 
of  them  that  there  was  not  the  slightest  trouble 
about  any  Christian  becoming  a  member  of  their 


156  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

fraternity;  that  the  requirements  of  membership 
would  not  put  any  difficulty  at  all  in  his  way.  I 
am  sorry  that  my  stay  in  Constantinople  extended 
to  only  ten  days  and  that  thus  I  had  not  the  time 
to  experiment  in  this  direction.  It  would  have 
given  me  a  great  deal  of  pleasure  to  have  returned 
as  a  member  of  a  darwish  fraternity.  Since  my 
return  to  this  country  I  have  been  told  by  Mr. 
Ananikian,  our  Sub-Librarian,  that  he  had 
known  a  member  of  the  Gregorian  Church  who 
was  called  ''the  Bektashite"  and  who  was  under- 
stood to  have  become  a  member  of  that  fraternity 
and  to  have  taken  part  in  its  religious  services. 
I  am  afraid  I  can  only  put  these  contradictory 
statements  before  you;  I  have  not  been  able  so 
to  arrange  them  or  to  correct  them  as  to  eliminate 
the  contradictions. 

I  may  say,  further,  that  the  more  I  have  had 
to  do  with  the  investigation  of  religious  matters, 
the  less  I  feel  is  it  possible  to  be  dogmatic  in  al- 
most any  way  as  to  the  usages  or  as  to  the  beliefs 
which  you  may  chance  to  find.  In  Islam,  for 
example,  there  is  the  broad  faith  that  is  laid 
down  in  the  theological  texts.  It  is  quite  easy 
to  fix  and  to  understand  that;  but  when  you  be- 


THE  MYSTICAL   LIFE  157 

gin  to  move  about  in  Muslim  countries,  you  find 
everywhere  little  bits  of  observance,  usage,  creed, 
tradition,  that  are,  often,  in  quite  distinct  con- 
tradiction to  the  opinions  laid  down  in  books.  In 
consequence,  it  is  the  most  hazardous  thing  pos- 
sible, when  you  are  told  anything  about  a  par- 
ticular district — that  such  and  such  is  what  the 
people  there  believe  or  do — it  is  the  most  hazard- 
ous thing  to  say  that  it  is  impossible;  that  they 
cannot  so  do  or  believe.  On  the  other  side,  how- 
ever, there  is  one  thing  which  must  be  said.  Al- 
though there  is  this  possibility  of  divergence, 
even  of  flat  contradiction,  always  present  in  the 
local  conditions,  these  local  conditions  are  never 
really  intelligible  unless  you  have  the  basis  of  a 
thorough  knowledge  of  the  theological  system  as 
it  is  generally  accepted,  believed  and  applied. 
When  you  have  attained  to  that,  you  can  trace 
out  these  varying  local  opinions  and  usages;  but, 
until  you  have  so  much  of  fixed  knowledge,  you 
have  really  no  starting  point  from  which  to 
investigate. 

But  what  part  do  these  fraternities  of  darwishes 
play  in  the  normal  life  of  Islam?  How  do  they 
make  themselves  felt?     How  are  they  the  chan- 


158  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

nels  of  the  religious  life?  Broadly,  there  are 
two  kinds  of  darwishes.  There  is  what  you 
might  call  the  professional  darwish,  the  monk  or 
friar  who  has  taken  absolute  vows;  he  is  separ- 
ated entirely  from  the  world  and  lives  in  a  mon- 
astery or  wanders  as  an  ascetic  begging  his  way. 
He  need  not  necessarily  be  unmarried;  Islam, 
under  all  conditions,  commends  and  honours  the 
married  state.  These  now  are  by  far  in  the 
minority.  Some  centuries  ago  there  must  have 
been  a  much  larger  proportion  of  such  monks  or 
friars,  as  you  may  choose  to  call  them,  because 
you  see  everywhere  in  Muslim  lands  the  ruins  or 
the  neglected  remains  of  monasteries  that  must 
once  have  been  inhabited  by  large  communities 
of  darwishes.  Of  them  there  are  now  hardly 
any  left,  and  the  buildings  have  come  to  be  simply 
rest  houses  where  pilgrims  are  put  up.  The 
"son  of  the  road"  can  find  help  and  shelter  here. 
The  other  class  of  darwishes  constitutes  by  far 
the  larger  proportion.  Its  members  are  exactly 
parallel  to  the  Tertiaries  of  the  Dominican  and 
Franciscan  orders.  That  is,  they  live  in  the 
world  in  every  respect;  but  they  have  taken  vows 
which  require  them  daily  or  weekly,  as  the  case 


THE   MYSTICAL   LIFE  159 

may  be,  to  go  through  certain  rehgious  cere- 
monies ;  they  carry  a  certain  badge  with  them  and 
regard  themselves  as  under  a  certain  obhgation 
to  the  general  body  and  as  standing  in  a  certain 
affiliation  with  it. 

A  very  large  percentage  of  the  population  of 
Cairo,  especially  of  the  masses  of  the  people,  be- 
longs in  one  way  or  another  to  the  darwish  fra- 
ternities as  such  Tertiaries.  They  do  not  live  in 
the  monasteries;  they  go  there  only  occasionally 
from  time  to  time,  but  they  have  their  relationship 
to  them,  and,  when  there  is  any  great  occasion, 
they  will  turn  out  in  the  procession  of  the  fra- 
ternity. They  attend  what  you  might  call,  as 
nearly  as  could  be,  prayer-meetings  in  the  mon- 
asteries, and  regard  themselves  each  as  part  of. 
his  fraternity. 

You  see,  then,  that  with  these  great  numbers 
of  Tertiaries,  as  I  have  called  them,  the  life  of 
the  darwish  fraternities  extends  far  beyond  the 
limits  of  the  few  full  members,  and  practically 
goes  out  through  the  mass  of  the  people.  It  is 
in  this  width  of  lay  memberships  that  the  great 
importance  of  the  fraternities  consists. 

Let  me  put  before  you  a  description  of  one  of 


l60  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

the  services  that  I  was  privileged  to  attend.  It 
is  exceedingly  difficult,  now,  in  Egypt  to  get  ad- 
mission to  any  of  their  religious  services.  At 
one  time,  as  you  know,  these  were  crowded  with 
tourists.  That  led  to  scandal.  The  darwishes 
were  accused  of  making  money  out  of  the  unbe- 
lievers; and  the  tourists  certainly  did  not  add  to 
the  religious  value  of  the  services  which  they 
attended.  I  was  told  a  good  deal  about  the  evils 
on  both  sides.  At  last  the  government  stepped 
in,  acting  through  the  Shaykh  al-Bekri  as  the 
head  of  all  the  fraternities,  and  these  services 
were  closed  to  all  except  Muslims.  So  far  as 
the  Shaykh  al-Bekri  was  concerned,  he  would 
have  preferred  to  stop  the  services  entirely,  but 
that  was  impossible. 

However,  through  a  friend  it  was  made  pos- 
sible for  me  to  attend  one  of  them.  Of  course, 
I  had  to  wear  a  fez,  and  the  Shaykh  in  charge 
of  the  ceremony  knew  that  I  was  not  a  Muslim, 
though  no  one  else  there  did.  It  would  be  exceed- 
ingly difficult  to  describe  the  service  exactly,  and 
I  must  content  myself  with  a  general  and  impres- 
sionistic picture  of  it  and  its  emotional  effects  on 
the  worshippers  and  on  myself.     This  sikr,  as  it 


THE    MYSTICAL   LIFE  l6l 

is  called,  or  "remembering"  of  Allah,  took  place 
in  a  long  shaped  room.  On  both  sides  benches 
were  arranged.  In  the  middle  was  a  carpeted 
space  with  a  railing  round  it  in  the  form  of  a 
horseshoe.  The  Shaykh  took  his  place  at  the 
open  end  of  the  horseshoe  with  his  back  towards 
the  wall.  The  darwishes,  evidently  men  who 
had  simply  come  in  from  the  street,  stood  round 
about  inside  the  railing  in  this  horseshoe  form. 
The  service  began  by  the  Shaykh  kneeling,  sit- 
ting back  on  his  heels,  and  repeating  the  Fatiha. 
Then  they  began  to  recite,  rapidly  and  in  cadence, 
certain  religious  formulae.  I  could  not  catch  all 
that  they  were  saying,  but  it  was  generally  of  a 
very  simple  character;  the  confession  of  faith; 
some  ascriptions  of  praise  to  the  Prophet,  etc. 
They  accompanied  these,  however,  with  certain 
motions  and  gestures  of  the  head  and  body  and 
by  great  care,  evidently,  with  regard  to  breathing. 
For  example,  one  of  the  most  frequently  re- 
curring elements  was  the  Muslim  confession  of 
faith.  La  ilaha  ilia  llah,  "There  is  no  God  save 
Allah,"  and  it  had  evidently  to  be  performed  In 
a  certain  way.  At  La  ilaha,  "There  is  no  God," 
the  head  of  each  went  down  In  front  of  one 
II 


l62  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

shoulder;  this  Is  the  phrase  of  denial;  the  noth- 
ingness of  all  things  is  to  be  felt.  Then,  at 
illa-lldh,  "except  Allah,"  the  head  went  down  in 
front  of  the  other  shoulder.  This  second  phrase 
is  assertion,  and  the  absoluteness  of  Allah's 
existence  must  be  felt.  This  movement  also  di- 
rected and  controlled  the  breathing.  The  recita- 
tion and  movement  gradually  grew  faster  and 
faster,  heads  going  from  side  to  side  in  perfect 
time;  head  down  at  the  one  point;  down  at  the 
other  point.  There  is  a  reason  for  this.  It  is 
part  of  a  great  discovery,  as  you  might  call  it, 
that  has  been  made  by  both  Indian  and  Muslim 
mystics,  in  regard  to  breathing  in  connection 
with  religious  effects.  If  the  breathing  is  regu- 
lated In  a  certain  way  in  the  utterance  of  such 
formulae  as  these,  the  emotional  effect  is  increased. 
I  suppose  it  has  some  influence  on  the  heart 
action,  and  that  that  reacts  in  turn.  I  presume, 
also,  that  with  ourselves  something  of  the  same 
kind  takes  place  in  the  singing  of  hymns ;  but  the 
historical  fact  is  that  oriental  mystics  have  ob- 
served this,  and  that  they  apply  It  systematically 
and  normally  to  the  stimulation  of  religious 
emotion. 


THE   MYSTICAL  LIFE  163 

But  it  was  perfectly  evident  that  the  young 
men  who  were  taking  part  were  intensely  inter- 
ested in  it  all.  While  I  watched  them  my  ques- 
tion at  first  was,  Why  do  they  do  this  ?  Does  it 
amuse  them?  It  was  not  in  itself,  apparently, 
an  amusing  thing;  but  it  was  certainly  a  thing 
into  which  they  threw  themselves  with  zest.  I 
felt  that  there  must  be  something  distinct  which 
they  got  out  of  it,  and  I  think  they  got  out  of  it 
at  first  a  certain  heightening  of  religious  emotion, 
a  throwing  off,  in  a  sense,  of  the  physical  veil, 
and  also  that  they  got  out  of  it  a  certain  effect 
of  auto-hypnosis.  They  produced  in  themselves 
a  pleasant  dreaminess.  Watching  them  for  a 
long  time,  these  were  the  only  definite  results  I 
could  obtain.  But,  later,  there  were  other  and 
more  violent  motions;  the  phrases,  too,  were 
varied.  After  a  time  they  introduced  darwishes 
who  played  upon  drums,  some  of  which  were 
very  sharp  in  pitch,  and  some  very  dull  and 
brooding.  These  were  kept  going  at  the  same 
time  with  the  reciting  of  these  formulae.  The 
speed  gradually  increased,  up,  and  up,  and  up, 
until  the  tension  upon  the  nerves  was  something 
indescribable.     It  was  perfectly  clear  to  me  now 


164  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

how  such  effects  were  produced  as  those  of  which 
I  had  often  read.  And  it  was  perfectly  clear  to 
me  at  last  how  it  was  that  those  young  men  went 
night  after  night  to  do  this  kind  of  thing.  The 
attraction  evidently  lay  in  a  very  curious  mixture 
of  esthetic  pleasure — derived  from  the  nerve  ten- 
sion and  the  lightly  hypnotic,  or  hypnoidal,  state 
into  which  they  were  cast — and  undoubtedly 
religious  exaltation.  The  latter  element  was  cer- 
tainly there. 

Now,  as  I  have  already  said  several  times,  in 
all  my  dealings  with  Muslims  I  have  tried  to 
approach  them  in  a  sympathetic  spirit  so  that  I 
might  feel  with  them  as  they  felt  and  thus,  as 
much  as  possible,  reach  Islam  on  the  inside,  if  I 
may  use  that  phrase.  In  this  case  I  did  my  best 
to  let  the  swinging  chant  work  upon  me,  and 
more  than  once  it  came  over  me  that  I  should  like 
to  go  down  and  join  the  circle  there;  to  take  my 
part  in  this  thing  and  discover  more  precisely 
how  it  all  felt  from  within.  I  suppose  I  should 
be  somewhat  ashamed  to  confess,  further,  that 
the  only  thing  that  really  deterred  me  was  that  I 
knew  that  I  would  have  a  great  deal  of  difficulty 
in  getting  off  my  boots,  and  still  more  difficulty 


THE    MYSTICAL   LIFE  165 

in  getting  them  on  again.  If  any  one  wishes  to 
investigate  religious  conditions  in  the  East,  he 
must  be  careful  to  wear  a  pair  of  shoes  which  will 
slip  easily  off  and  on. 

But  I  do  not  want  you  to  think  that  the  effect 
of  this  scene  upon  me  was  not,  and  that  in  a  pre- 
cise sense,  religious  in  character.  I  wish  to  say 
as  emphatically  as  possible  that  I  did  feel  religious 
reality  in  it;  did  feel  that  behind  all  this  there 
was  a  real  devotional  spirit;  and  that  certain,  at 
least,  of  those  young  men  were  getting  something 
out  of  it  that  perhaps  they  could  not  have  got 
otherwise.  There  was  this,  at  any  rate,  to  be  said 
for  it,  that  there  was  in  it  none  of  the  irregulated 
transports,  outbreaks,  shriekings,  which  so  often 
appear  in  what  we  call  times  of  revival.  The 
whole  performance  was  kept  carefully  in  hand. 
It  was  plain  to  me  that  throughout  it  all  the 
Shaykh  who  was  presiding,  or  his  assistant — as 
it  lasted  a  long  time  he  was  once  or  twice  relieved 
by  an  assistant — one  or  other  had  his  hand  upon 
this  great  machine,  was  keeping  in  touch  with  it, 
holding  it  in  and  down.  Exactly  as  a  conductor 
will  regulate  and  keep  hold  of  his  orchestra;  so 
he  played  upon  them;   so   he  kept  them   within 


l66  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

bounds.  There  was  nothing  there  oi  the  nature 
of  an  outbreak;  nothing  of  the  disgraceful  scenes 
— if  I  may  say  it — which  have  appeared  at  revi- 
vals. This  was  normal,  regular;  their  religious 
life  week  by  week.  It  was  not  any  working  of 
themselves  up  for  a  particular  occasion.  I  saw 
special  public  ^ikrs  on  one  or  two  other  occasions ; 
but  nothing  in  any  way,  in  any  degree,  so  impress- 
ive as  this  plain  prayer-meeting — for  a  Muslim 
prayer-meeting  it  really  was — which  I  have 
described  to  you. 

On  the  birthday  of  the  Prophet,  for  example, 
there  is  a  great  festival  in  Cairo,  and  on  the  plain, 
outside  of  the  city  to  the  north,  tents  are  erected 
in  which  the  different  darwish  fraternities  hold 
exhibitions.  For  this  reason,  inasmuch  as  they 
are  perfectly  open  to  the  public  and  inasmuch  as 
the  public  passes  along  from  one  to  another,  tak- 
ing up  stall  after  stall,  the  solemnity  and  religious 
reality  were  greatly  impaired.  It  was  evident 
to  me  what  must  have  been  the  effect  on  those 
sikrs  when  tourists  were  freely  admitted. 

Still  more  mechanical  and  perfunctory  was  the 
performance  held  at  the  exhibition  of  the  sacred 
covering  of  the  Ka'ba,  before  it  was  sent  off  to 


THE   MYSTICAL  LIFE  167 

Mecca.  There  the  performers  were  evidently 
hired  professionals  who  took  no  interest  in  what 
they  were  doing.  In  the  very  middle  of  it,  for 
instance,  when  they  were  supposed  to  be  quite 
overcome  with  religious  emotion,  I  noticed  one 
taking  out  his  watch  and  looking  at  it.  So  abso- 
lutely different  was  the  spirit  of  this  comedy  from 
that  scene  of  religious  sincerity  which  I  have 
attempted  to  describe  in  detail. 

But,  to  return,  what  was  the  relation  of  those 
young  men  to  this  monastery?  That  is  not  very 
easy  to  define,  but  as  far  as  I  could  see,  it  seemed 
to  be  for  them  a  kind  of  combination  of  club- 
house and  church.  They  did  not  go  there  simply 
to  perform  such  religious  exercises  as  these. 
They  evidently  went  there  to  meet  one  another, 
to  sit  round  and  talk ;  and  only  a  certain  number 
of  them  joined  the  circle.  I  noticed,  for  example, 
one  or  two  that  strolled  from  the  ante-room  into 
the  room  where  it  was  held.  They  were  asked 
to  join  the  zikr  but  shook  their  heads.  They  did 
not  feel  like  it  that  night,  evidently.  But  it  was 
clear  that  they  all  had  some  relationship  or  other 
with  this  building,  with  this  Shaykh  and  with  one 
another,  and  I  think  I  can  describe  that  relation- 


l68  ASPECTS   OF    ISLAM 

ship  most  exactly  as  being  a  combination  of  club 
membership  and  church  membership. 

What,  finally,  are  the  religious  and  moral 
effects  of  such  performances  as  I  have  just 
described?  In  answering  that  question  we  must 
distinguish,  for  undoubtedly  some  of  the  effects 
are  good,  and  some  are  equally  distinctly  bad.  I 
suppose  it  depends  upon  the  individual  and  upon 
his  way  of  taking  it. 

It  was  my  very  good  fortune  in  Cairo  to  become 
tolerably  well  acquainted  with  one  convert  from 
Islam  to  Christianity  who  had  been  well  educated 
and  had  also  been  a  darwish.  He  was  a  grad- 
uate of  the  Azhar  University,  one  of  the  *Ulama, 
the  learned  in  theology  and  canon  law,  and  if  he 
had  remained  in  Islam  he  would  have  become  a 
college  or  university  professor.  He  had  also 
reached  a  tolerably  advanced  grade  In  the  Khal- 
watl  fraternity  of  darwishes.  What  spoke  most 
to  me  for  his  sincerity  and  his  religious  reality, 
both  as  Muslim  and  as  Christian,  was  the  fact 
that  still,  even  though  he  was  known  and  accepted 
as  being  a  Christian,  he  was  welcome  at  the 
Azhar  and  was  also  on  good  terms  with  his  dar- 
wish friends  and  teachers  in  his  old  fraternity. 


THE    MYSTICAL   LIFE  1 69 

It  threw  a  good  deal  of  light,  I  confess,  for  me 
upon  what  I  have  heard  so  much,  at  one  time  and 
another,  of  the  difficulty  of  the  position  of  the 
convert.  That  depends  very  largely  upon  the 
convert  himself. 

This  man,  by  the  solidity  of  his  character,  by 
the  respect  in  which  he  had  been  held  before  he 
became  a  Christian,  by  his  own  tact  and  careful- 
ness after  he  had  become  a  Christian,  managed 
to  remain  upon  perfectly  good  terms  with  his 
friends.  But  my  point  here  is  as  to  his  darwish 
connection.  I  asked  him  one  time,  "Supposing 
the  specifically  Muslim  references  in  the  religious 
ejaculations  and  prayers  that  are  used  at  those 
darwish  circles  were  expunged,  especially,  of 
course,  the  references  to  Muhammad,  and  there 
were  left  only  what  was  acceptable,  possible,  both 
to  Christian  and  Muslim — nor  would  It  be  a  very 
difficult  thing  to  do  that — supposing  that  were 
done,  could  you  now,  with  your  present  religious 
insight  and  attitude,  take  part  In  one  of  those 
sikrs  to  your  spiritual  advantage?"  This  was, 
evidently,  a  rather  new  Idea,  for  he  thought  a 
moment ;  but  then  he  answered  quite  emphatically 
and  certainly  that  he  could. 


170  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

He  began  then  to  explain  to  me  the  ideas  that 
went  with  each  one  of  those  motions  of  the  body ; 
that  when  the  head  was  bowed  on  this  side,  there 
was  a  certain  f eeHng  that  you  were  to  have ;  when 
the  head  was  bowed  on  the  other  side  there  was 
another  feehng  that  you  ought  to  have,  each 
regularly,  mechanically,  along  with  the  bowing. 
And  he  was  perfectly  certain  that  it  would  still 
be  to  his  spiritual  advantage,  help,  growth,  to 
have  part  in  such  things  if  that  were  otherwise 
possible.  In  fact,  I  thought  I  could  sometimes 
trace  in  him  a  little  pathos  in  looking  back  upon 
the  times  of  that  emotional  religious  life,  a  cer- 
tain regret  that  now  it  should  not  be  possible. 
It  had  been  for  him,  you  could  see,  when  he  was 
a  Muslim,  all  in  all ;  and  now  it  was  cut  off. 

At  one  time  he  had  as  a  darwish  developed 
rather  remarkable  telepathic  gifts,  that  is,  the 
ability  under  certain  favorable  spiritual  condi- 
tions to  know  what  might  be  doing  at  a  distance, 
to  hear  words  spoken  at  a  distance,  and  things 
of  that  kind.  He,  evidently,  had  not  the  slightest 
doubt  in  his  own  mind  that  such  things  really 
took  place;  Islam  registers  them  among  the 
regular  minor  miracles  of  saints,  and  he  accepted 


THE   MYSTICAL  LIFE  I7I 

the  facts,  whatever  he  had  come  to  think  of  Islam. 
It  is  probable — let  me  here  throw  in — that  the 
general  underestimating  among  us  of  the  religious 
meaning  and  value  of  the  life  of  darwishes  is  due 
to  those  minor  miracles.     They  are  often  excel- 
lently attested  but  we  have  decided  that  all  such 
things   are    impossible.     So   Lane    even    in   his 
Modern  Egyptians  treats  the  darwishes  in  a  chap- 
ter on  Superstitions.     But  to  return  to  my  fri'end, 
he  knew  of  a  great  many  such  occurrences  and 
told  me  much  about  them;  he  was  perfectly  pre- 
pared to  admit  that  for  Orientals  such  occurrences 
must  be  commoner  and  easier — more  natural  and 
normal — than  they  could  be  for  Occidentals.     I 
told  him  that  of  late  years  we  had  been  investi- 
gating those  things  ourselves  here  in  the  West, 
trying   to   bring   them   under   rule   by   scientific 
method,  and  that  we  knew  a  great  deal  more 
about  them  now  than  we  had  done  not  a  great 
many  years  ago.     Then  he  told  me  some  of  the 
things  that  had  happened  to  himself  as  a  darwish, 
and  especially  he  told  me  this,  with  a  plainly  re- 
gretful if  also  humorous  tone  in  his  voice:  "At 
one  time  my  Shaykh,  when  he  knew  of  some  of 
those  things,  said  to  me,  'Thou  art  a  saint.' " 


172  ASPECTS   OF    ISLAM 

(He  evidently  regarded  this  promising  disciple  as 
one  marked  by  Allah  as  a  saint  through  those 
gifts  of  miracle)  ''Then  I  was  a  saint;  but  now  I 
am  a  Christian,"  my  friend  added.  But  I  think 
that  he  also  recognized  that  in  Christendom  it 
was  not  as  easy  to  be  a  saint  as  in  Islam.  I  may 
add  that  his  telepathic  gifts  did  not  cease  when 
he  became  a  Christian,  but  they  had  no  recognized 
place  in  his  new  scheme  of  religion.  In  general, 
however,  my  point  is  this:  this  man,  certainly, 
although  he  never  put  it  in  so  many  words  to  me, 
missed  that  side  of  his  religious  life,  and  was  per- 
fectly sure  that,  in  the  past,  he  had  got  spiritual 
advantage  and  edification  out  of  it.  So  much  for 
the  good. 

What  of  the  bad?  I  never  knew  in  my  own 
experience  any  such  cases;  but  I  heard  stories 
from  time  to  time,  about  effects  of  such  sikrs 
upon  some  of  those  taking  part  in  them  which 
suggested  possible  elements  of  evil.  It  may  be 
rather  a  startling  thing  to  suggest  that  the  first 
downward  steps  of  a  young  man  had  been  his 
going  too  much  to  prayer-meetings,  but  in  Islam 
that  actually  does  take  place. 

I  was  told,  for  example,  by  one  of  my  friends 


THE   MYSTICAL  LIFE  I73 

in  Cairo  that  he  had  been  compelled  to  discharge 
two  of  the  compositors  in  his  printing  office  be- 
cause they  had  become  quite  useless,  in  a  business 
sense,  from  too  much  darwishing,  if  I  may  coin 
a  verb.  As  he  described  it,  they  would  go  to 
these  zikrs  several  times  a  week,  and  the  conse- 
quence was  that  all  through  the  day,  when  they 
sat  at  the  composing  bench,  they  were  droning 
over  to  themselves  religious  phrases,  scraps  of 
hymns  as  it  were,  while  they  were  doing  their 
work,  and  their  work  necessarily  suffered.  Now, 
I  think  the  fact  was  simply  that  they  had  learned 
the  knack  of  putting  themselves  into  a  hypnoidal 
or  dreamy  condition  that  was  enjoyable  in  itself 
but  was  just  as  bad,  just  as  destructive  of  all 
activity,  as  indulgence  in  opium.  They  had 
acquired  this  knack  and  they  kept  themselves  in 
that  state  all  through  the  day,  under  a  continuous 
auto-hypnosis.  The  ^ronsequence  was  perfectly 
simple  and  inevitable.  Of  course,  they  became 
useless  for  ordinary  life. 

That,  broadly,  is  the  evil  that  may  come  of 
such  things.  They  have  to  be  kept  in  hand  in 
the  most  careful,  rigorous  fashion,  or  they  may 
pass   out   of   control.     And   this  moral,   I   need 


174  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

hardly  say,  applies  to  much  so-called  religious 
fervour  amongst  ourselves,  although,  from  the 
nature  of  the  Western  temperament,  it  remains 
epidemic  or  even  individual  only.  In  the  East 
it  is  fairly  endemic. 

In  connection  with  this  it  should  be  said  that 
in  the  East,  in  general,  there  is  far  more  use 
made  of  hypnotism  than  with  us.  For  the 
Oriental,  it  is  a  normal  and  ordinary  thing. 
What  we,  from  time  to  time,  have  come  to  dis- 
cover, again  and  again  anew,  and  each  time  find 
very  wonderful,  they  accept  and  use  and  under- 
stand after  a  fashion  all  the  time. 

For  example,  I  was  told  in  Jerusalem  by  an 
observer  of  absolute  veracity  and  keenness  of 
observation,  and  who  happened  also  to  have  a 
good  working  knowledge  of  hypnotism,  that  she 
had  seen,  in  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre, 
on  one  of  the  great  festivals,  the  officer  in  charge 
of  the  Turkish  guard,  when  some  of  his  men  were 
beginning  to  droop  under  the  heat  and  excite- 
ment of  it  all,  go  up  to  them  and  go  through 
what  were  evidently  the  motions  of  hypnotism, 
stiffening  them  again  to  keep  the  positions  they 
were  in, 


THE    MYSTICAL   LIFE  175 

That  is  only  one  illustration  of  the  way  in 
which  this  thing  which  we  often  think  so  very 
wonderful  and  on  the  border-line  of  the  super- 
natural, enters  into  the  ordinary  working  usage 
of  the  life  of  the  Muslim  East.  They  know  it 
there,  but  they  have  no  theories  about  it,  and 
they  do  not  study  it  as  our  psychologists  do. 
They  simply  use  it  for  practical  purposes  in  their 
own  rule  of  thumb  fashion.  It  is  not  at  all  super- 
natural for  them,  except  so  far  as  everything  is 
supernatural. 


LECTURE  VI 

THE  MYSTICAL  LIFE  AND  THE  DARWISH 
FRATERNITIES  CONTINUED 

T  CANNOT  open  this  lecture  without  a  tribute, 
however  brief,  to  the  beloved  memory  of  my 
pupil  and  friend,  Daniel  Miner  Rogers.  He  is 
the  second  of  my  pupils  to  give,  in  the  most  literal 
sense,  his  blood  for  the  kingdom  of  God  and  His 
Christ  in  the  Muslim  world.  With  his  name  I 
would  associate  this  course  of  lectures  and  to  his 
memory  I  will,  God  willing,  inscribe  them  as  a 
book.^ 

In  my  last  lecture  I  was  putting  before  you 
the  value  and  importance  that  lie  for  the  religious 
life  of  the  Muslims  in  the  darwish  fraternities 
and  in  their  meetings  for  worship.  I  suggested 
that  it  was  in  those  fraternities,  in  <:heir  meeting- 
houses  and  in  their  acts  of  worship,  tuat  we  might 
find  the  nearest  parallels  to  our  separate  church 

^  This  lecture  was  delivered  on  April  20th,  1909,  a  day  or 
two  after  the  tidings  of  Mr.  Rogers'  murder  had  reached 
America. 

176 


THE   MYSTICAL   LIFE  177 

organizations  and  church  buildings,  and  also  to 
our  stated  worship. 

And  here  a  very  curious  question  confronts  at 
once  the  investigator  of  Muslim  religious  life 
upon  the  spot.  What  do  we  find  there  which 
takes  the  place  of  our  churches,  of  those  religious 
organizations  which  are  also  with  us  fast  becom- 
ing social  ones  and  around  which  both  our  indi- 
vidual and  our  community  lives  are  tending  to 
crystallize  so  peculiarly  ?  That  place  is  not  taken 
— this  becomes  plain  in  a  very  short  time  to  any 
open-eyed  on-looker — that  place  is  not  taken  by 
the  mosques.  The  worship  that  goes  on  there  is 
a  very  curious  combination  of  congregational  and 
individual  worship.  It  is  congregational  inas- 
much as  the  individuals  there  join  together  in 
praise  and  prayer  to  Allah;  but  it  is  individual 
inasmuch  as  no  one  has  a  peculiar  association 
with  any  particular  mosque;  nor  has  the  organ- 
ization, have  the  officials  of  any  mosque,  any. 
particular  jurisdiction  or  relationship — religious 
or  civil — with  those  who  worship  there.  The 
most  that  has  been  reached  is  that  in  Turkey  the 
imam  of  each  mosque  is  more  or  less  a  paid  serv- 
ant of  the  state  and  is  responsible  for  such  mat- 

12 


1^8  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

ters  as  the  issuing  of  passports  and  performing 
the  rites  of  circumcision,  marriage  and  burial. 
That  is  the  nearest  approach  that  the  mosque 
organization  has  made  to  being  a  parish  organ- 
ization, responsible  and  useful,  in  certain  ways, 
for  those  living  in  its  neighborhood. 

But  it  is  a  perfectly  conceivable  thing  that 
those  in  the  neighborhood  of  any  mosque  may 
not  worship  there.  I  discovered  by  particular 
enquiry  that  the  Muslim  had  no  feeling  that  the 
preacher  of  any  mosque  was  peculiarly  his 
preacher;  that  he  stood  in  any  spiritual  relation- 
ship to  him.  He  might  go  anywhere;  he  might 
have  part  in  any  worship ;  wherever  he  was  when 
the  time  of  prayer  came  round,  there  was  his 
mosque,  there  he  might  worship. 

I  took  pains  at  one  time  to  enter  into  particular 
conversation  on  this  subject  with  one  of  my 
Muslim  friends  and,  in  order  to  make  plain  to 
him  what  my  point  really  was,  I  tried  to  put  be- 
fore him  the  relationship  which  existed  between 
the  minister  of  a  parish  church  and  the  congre- 
gation in  his  charge.  His  feeling  about  it  was 
rather  interesting.  He  evidently  regarded  it — 
I  trust  I  gained  a  true  impression — as  an  undue 


THE    MYSTICAL    LIFE  179 

infringement  of  religious  liberty.  He  evidently- 
felt  that  he  would  not  like  to  think  that  any  indi- 
vidual ecclesiastic  considered  that  he  had  any 
particular  right  to  keep  an  eye  upon  him ;  nor  did 
he  seem  to  feel  in  the  slightest  that  there  was 
need  for  him,  in  his  spiritual  life,  of  any  such 
relationship;  that  he  could  draw  any  advantage 
from  it ;  that,  in  short,  such  a  thing  could  be  any 
good  at  all.  I  fear  that  I  withdrew  from  that 
conference  rather  upset.  I  could  not  feel  that  I 
had  succeeded  in  commending  the  Christian  sys- 
tem of  church  membership,  discipline  and  worship 
to  this  particular  Muslim,  and  I  confess  that, 
from  one  point  of  view,  there  is  a  certain  grandeur 
in  such  a  feeling  of  spiritual  freedom.  There 
are  the  prayers  five  times  a  day,  and  the  Muslim 
meets  these  times  wherever  he  may  be.  If  there 
is  a  mosque  where  he  can  go  to  join  the  worship- 
pers, he  does  so;  If  there  is  not,  he  prays  by 
himself.  So  much  then,  on  the  point  that  the 
mosque  does  not  represent  any  centre  for  common 
religious  life. 

But  the  masses  of  the  people — the  religious- 
minded  people — must  have  some  sentiment  and 
feeling  for  religious  community  and  some  way 


l80  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

of  fraternizing  and  expressing  it.  That  Is  sup- 
plied to  them  by  the  darwish  fraternities  and 
their  monasteries,  the  houses  where  take  place  the 
acts  of  worship  which  I  put  before  you  in  my  last 
lecture.  This  holds  of  the  masses  of  the  people. 
They  do  not  mind  the  extreme  emotionalism 
which  characterizes  these  gatherings.  There  is 
nothing  antipathetic  to  them  in  that ;  but  it  is  per- 
fectly true  that  there  is  a  growing  element  in 
Islam  to  which — for  better  or  for  w^orse — such 
emotional  exhibitions  are  becoming  repellent.  I 
came  across  that  element  again  and  again.  I 
found  that  I  had  to  pick  with  care  the  Muslim 
from  whom  I  might  ask  information  on  matters 
connected  with  the  darwishes.  He  might  take  it 
ill ;  he  might  think  that  I  could  not  possibly  be  in 
sympathy  with  those  exhibitions,  and  that  there- 
fore I  could  be  asking  about  them  only  in  order 
to  ridicule  them.  An  extreme  sensitiveness  is 
developing  in  the  Muslim  mind  on  that  side. 

For  example,  I  have  spoken  already  of  the 
Shaykh  al-Bekri,  a  descendant  of  Abu  Bekr  the 
first  Khalifa  of  the  Prophet,  w^ho  lives  in  Cairo 
and  is  the  legal  and  accepted  head  of  all  the  dar- 
wish fraternities  in  Egypt.     They  must  all,  so 


THE    MYSTICAL   LIFE  l8l 

long  as  they  are  in  Egypt,  regard  themselves  as 
under  his  rule,  his  ultimate  jurisdiction.  This 
Shaykh  al-Bekri  is  a  very  curious  product — I 
think  I  can  properly  use  that  word.  He  was  in 
France  for  a  long  time;  his  education,  to  a  con- 
siderable extent,  has  been  French.  He  is  soaked 
in  French  philosophical  ideas,  and  he  is  now  back 
in  Egypt  and  finds  himself  by  heredity  put  into 
this  quite  anomalous  position  for  a  pupil  of  the 
Encyclopedic.  Lord  Cromer  remarks,  in  his  book 
on  modern  Egypt,^  that  when  he  first  knew  the 
Shaykh  al-Bekri,  that  young  man  asked  if  he 
could  give  him  any  books  on  the  philosophical 
principles  lying  behind  the  French  revolution. 
Imagine,  then,  a  man  of  that  type  at  the  head  of 
all  the  darwish  fraternities  and  supposed  to  be  in 
charge,  more  or  less,  of  those  exhibitions  of  re- 
ligious emotion  which  I  put  before  you  in  my  last 
lecture.  Perhaps  it  is  fortunate  that  he  did  not 
and  does  not  take  anything  very  seriously,  even 
the  principles  of  the  French  revolution  or  the 
methods  of  the  darwishes.  But  he,  evidently,  at 
one  time  did  feel  that  he  had  to  draw  the  line  at 
some  point  or  other  and  so,  in  a  moment  of  un- 

^  Modern  Egypt,  ii,  177. 


l82  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

wonted  energy,  he  got  some  of  his  assistants  to 
compile  a  text-book  for  the  use  of  the  shaykhs  in 
charge  of  the  darwish  fraternities.  They  were 
to  use  it  as  a  manual  of  theology  for  the  instruc- 
tion of  their  disciples.  He  gave  me  a  copy  of 
that  manual  of  theology.  I  have  not  read  it  with 
any  great  care,  but  I  have  run  through  it;  and  it 
is  very  interesting  in  one  respect.  It  does  not 
really  deal  at  all  with  the  emotional  religious  life. 
In  reading  it,  you  would  never  imagine  that  it 
was  intended  for  the  guidance  of  darwishes. 
You  could  never  guess  that  it  stood  in  connection 
with  expressions  of  religious  emotion.  It  is  evi- 
dent that  his  ideal,  so  far  as  he  had  energy  to 
have  one,  was  to  smooth  out  all  those  things,  to 
bring  the  darwish  fraternities  down  to  what  I 
suppose  he  would  call  "sane  religion."  I  am 
tolerably  sure  that  he  will  never  reduce  them  to 
that  plane,  and  I  am  quite  sure,  if  he  ever  did 
succeed  in  doing  it,  he  would  take  the  real,  the 
essential  religious  life  out  of  Islam. 

But  this  attitude  of  his  and  of  his  like,  for  he 
does  not  stand  alone,  is,  you  must  remember,  a 
purely  modern  one.  The  old  theologians  and 
scholars  of  Islam  had  no  such  feeling  of  being 


THE    MYSTICAL    LIFE  183 

half  ashamed  of  religious  emotion.  Their  atti- 
tude towards  it  was  that  it  was  either  of  God  or 
of  the  devil.  They  either  denounced  it  as  a 
thing  utterly  false  and  to  be  abhorred  and  rejected 
and  said  that  any  one  who  had  anything  to  do 
with  it  was  to  be  cast  forth ;  or  else  they  accepted 
this  manifestation  as  one  of  the  means  of  worship 
that  God  had  appointed  for  men  in  this  world. 

You  will  remember,  perhaps,  that  Wellhausen, 
in  dealing  with  the  character  of  Samuel,  lays 
great  stress  upon  this ;  that  it  would  be  quite  im- 
possible for  Samuel,  the  true  prophet,  the  clear- 
sighted leader,  to  have  anything  at  all  to  do  with 
such  a  procession  of  very  minor  prophets  that 
Saul  met  coming  down  the  hill  and  to  which  he 
joined  himself;  that  there  must  be  some  historical 
confusion  in  that  medley,  that  he  could  not  have 
been  those  two  things — a  great  theologian  and 
religious  leader,  and  also  a  darwish. 

Now,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  we  find  exactly  that 
combination  appearing  everywhere  in  Islam.  The 
greatest  theologian  of  all,  a  man  whose  books  I 
have  to  read  constantly  in  my  work  on  Islam,  a 
man  in  whose  books  I  have  found  the  true  key  to 
Islam,  a  man  who  stands  among  the  theologians 


184  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

of  the  world  in  the  same  rank,  without  doubt  or 
scruple,  as  Augustine  and  Aquinas — that  man 
had  part  in  all  the  ecstacies  and  emotional  exhibi- 
tions of  the  darwishes.  That  man  passed  eleven 
years  of  his  life  as  a  wandering  ascetic  darwish, 
learning  in  pain,  solitude  and  hunger  what  the 
faith  of  God  was.  He  stands  out  as  a  sign  that 
there  is  no  impossibility  at  all  in  the  great  theolo- 
gian knowing  also  what  lies  in  the  emotional 
•religious  life.   ' 

From  that  one  example  you  will  realize  that 
this  scrupulosity  in  the  educated  element  of  Islam 
at  the  present  time  is  modern  and  modern  only. 
So  far,  even  yet,  it  covers  only  a  certain  limited 
section  of  the  Muslim  world. 

But  now  let  me  pass  to  the  question  of  this 
mysticism  as  it  shows  itself  historically  in  Islam. 
How  did  it  arise?  Like  almost  everything  else 
in  Islam  the  seeds  were  already  in  the  mind  of 
Muhammad.  It  is  to  me  one  of  the  most  out- 
standing features  of  the  greatness  of  Muhammad 
that  Islam  should  have  so  developed  the  ideas  that 
he  cast  into  it.  It  has  developed  them  sometimes 
very  strangely  and  in  a  way  that  he  himself 
would  not  have  recognized,  but  you  can,  in  look- 


THE   MYSTICAL   LIFE  185 

ing  back  to  the  Qur'an,  see  there  in  "the  mind  of 
Muhammad"  the  possible  beginning  of  almost  all 
of  them. 

Now,  it  is  commonly  supposed  that  the  con- 
ception of  the  Person  of  God  held  by  Muhammad 
was  of  a  peculiarly  materialistic,  external  char- 
acter; that  Allah  for  him  was  withdrawn  far 
from  all  his  creation;  was  ruling  it  as  though  at 
arm's  length.  From  him,  of  course,  came  all; 
but  he  was  not  in  that  all.  That  idea  cah  be 
justified  by  very  many  passages  in  the  Qur'an. 
There  is  no  question  about  its  existence  there; 
but  there  are  also  other  passages  which  show  that 
Muhammad  was  a  true  mystic,  was  afloat  upon 
that  shoreless  sea,  without  guide,  without  ballast. 
Phrases  come  in  here  and  there  that  stand  in 
flat  contradiction  to  the  conception  of  the  sepa- 
rateness  of  Allah. 

For  example,  he  is  never  tired  of  coming  back 
upon  this — that  Allah  is  the  one,  the  only  reality. 
Now,  think  of  the  questions  which  follow  at  once. 
Is  he  the  only  thing  real?  What  is  he,  then,  in 
relation  to  the  world?  What  is  the  world  in 
relation  to  him?  What  is  his  place  in  or  with  the 
world? 


l86  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

Again,  there  is  a  phrase  which,  evidently,  had 
caught  the  imagination  of  Muhammad  and  to 
which  he  returns  again  and  again.  It  is  that  of 
"the  Face  of  Allah."  He  uses  it  quite  differently 
from  the  other  anthropomorphisms  in  the  Qur'an. 
Whence  immediately  he  got  the  phrase  I  do  not 
know;  it  comes  ultimately,  without  doubt,  from 
"the  countenance  of  Yahwe"  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment and  means,  of  course,  the  self,  the  essence 
of  Allah.  But  it  is  clear  that  Muhammad  used 
it  with  a  feeling  that  there  was  something  more 
behind  it  and  involved  in  it,  and  later  Islam  has 
taken  it  and  developed  it  and  found,  in  truth,  all 
the  mysteries  of  the  emotional  life  in  it,  given  in- 
directly with  it.  Thus  Muhammad  uses  it :  Men 
act  "out  of  desire  for  the  Face  of  Allah"  (Qur. 
ii,  274;  xiii,  22;  xcii,  20)  or  else  they  simply 
"desire  the  Face  of  Allah"  (Qur.  vi,  52;  xviii, 
27;  XXX,  2)7,  38) ;  they  act  "for  the  sake  of  the 
Face  of  Allah"  (Qur.  Ixxvii,  9).  Then  here  are 
the  great  texts  to  which  all  the  mystics  of  Islam 
always  come  back :  "Allah's  are  the  East  and  the 
West;  wherever  ye  turn,  there  is  the  Face  of 
Allah"  (Qur.  ii,  109).  And  again,  "Everything 
goes  to   destruction — is   going  to   destruction — 


THE    MYSTICAL   LIFE  187 

except  His  Face"  (Qur.  xxviii,  88).  Then  again, 
"Whoever  is  upon  the  earth  is  fleeting — vanish- 
ing— and  the  Face  of  thy  Lord  abideth"  (Qur. 
Iv,  26). 

You  can  see,  then,  that  something  more  lies  in 
these  phrases  than  the  essence  of  Allah.  Muham- 
mad was,  in  truth,  no  theologian.  Contradictions 
come  right  and  left  in  the  Qur'an  which  show 
that.  No  one  has  succeeded  yet  in  building  up 
a  system  of  Qur'anic  theology,  nor  will  it  ever 
be  possible.  Muhammad  was  simply  a  God-in- 
toxicated poet.  The  feeling  of  Allah  over- 
whelmed him,  and  that  feeling  he  sought  to 
express  in  all  those  different  phrases.  Single 
aspects  only  of  a  truth  came  to  him,  and  to  each 
aspect  he  gave,  for  the  time,  the  weight  of  the 
whole  rounded  truth. 

But  there  is  another  side  to  Muhammad's 
mysticism.  As  I  have  already  pointed  out,  an 
idea  dominant  in  him  is  the  ascetic.  The  fear  of 
the  Fire  was  ever  present  with  him,  and  the 
knowledge  that  God  would  bring  all  into  judg- 
ment and  that  that  judgment  would  be  a  very 
terrible  ordeal.  Therefore  he,  and  Islam  after 
him,  have  sought  by  ascetic  exercises  to  remove 


l88  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

the  veil  from  their  eyes,  that  they  might  see  clearly 
the  will  of  Allah,  the  faith  which  he  has  made 
incumbent  upon  mankind;  that  they  might  not 
be  blinded  by  the  vain  shows  of  this  world;  that 
they  might  be  able  to  go  on  seeking  Allah,  noth- 
ing but  Allah,  simply  His  Face. 

But  for  that  insight  is  needed,  and  such  insight 
can  be  gained  on  the  part  of  the  ascetic  only  by 
those  exercises  which  take  away  the  world  from 
the  soul  and  heart  of  man. 

But  again,  though  Muhammad  had  a  very 
exalted  conception  of  his  own  office,  yet,  strange 
as  it  may  seem,  he  did  not  limit  divine  inspi- 
ration to  himself  or  to  the  prophets  who  had  pre- 
ceded him,  in  the  long  line  of  whom  he  was  the 
last.  He  freely  admitted  a  certain  minor  inspi- 
ration belonging  to  the  saints  of  Allah,  the  friends 
of  Allah,  in  the  Arabic  phrase,  to  whom  Allah 
shows  him.self  and  his  truth.  Still  more,  every 
human  being,  at  some  time  or  other,  comes  in 
contact  with  the  unseen  world,  and  is  taught 
directly  by  God  in  dreams.  "Dreaming,"  said 
Muhammad  in  a  tradition,  *'is  one  six-and-fortieth 
part  of  prophecy."  Now,  whether  that  exact 
proportion  holds  or  not — the  tradition  itself  as- 


THE   MYSTICAL   LIFE  1 89 

sumes  different  arithmetical  forms — there  is  no 
question  that  Muhammad  himself  believed  that 
the  divine  world  was  reached  in  dreams,  and  that 
truth  and  guidance  were  given  in  dreams.  He, 
therefore,  did  not  keep  the  leading  of  Allah  to 
himself  and  say  to  his  followers,  **'Only  with  me 
and  my  words  and  my  book  is  guidance  to  be 
found."  He  admitted  freely  that  some  form  or 
other,  in  differing  degrees,  of  minor  inspiration 
was  open  to  all  men. 

Again,  there  are  certain  phrases  occurring  in 
the  Qur'an  which  express  this  same  idea  of  an 
intercourse  with  God  coming  to  the  believer  di- 
rectly, without  intermediaries.  It  is  said,  for 
instance,  (Qur.  xiii,  28)  that  "remembering" 
God  rests  the  heart.  Later  Islam  has  interpreted 
that  "remembering"  as  a  taking  part  in  sucH 
devotional  exercises  of  the  darwishes  as  I  have 
described  to  you.  The  word  zikr  (dhikr)  means 
remembering,  and  the  basal  text  for  such  devo- 
tional services  is  Qur.  xxxiii,  41.  But  I  have  no 
question  that  for  Muhammad  the  meaning  was 
that  any  one  who  gave  himself  to  the  thought  of 
God  would  receive  from  God  rest,  calm  and 
strength.     "Our  hearts  are  restless  until  we  rest 


igO  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

In  Thee,"  were  the  words,  you  see,  both  of  Augus- 
tine and  of  Muhammad. 

Again,  in  the  Qur'an  (xviii,  64)  Muhammad 
refers  to  a  knowledge  that  comes  from  Allah 
himself  (min  ladunna,  ''from  Us  Ourselves"). 
The  expression  has  crystallized  in  later  mystical 
language,  but  as  it  stands  in  the  Qur'an  it  means 
simply  knowledge  from  Allah  that  comes  directly 
by  religious  intuition,  as  opposed  to  knowledge 
that  comes  by  human  teaching,  or  by  tradition, 
or  through  any  thinking  out  by  reason. 

In  these  ways,  then,  it  is  plain  that  in  the  mind 
of  Muhammad  himself  the  mystical  conception 
was  alive,  and  it  has  been  very  easy  for  Islam  to 
develop  on  the  mystical  path  that  I  have  already 
put  before  you. 

But  that  later  development  was  affected  very 
strangely  from  the  outside.  First,  there  came  to 
bear  upon  it  the  influence  of  the  Christian  mystics. 
This  seems  to  have  worked  peculiarly  through 
an  extreme  development  of  the  monophysite 
heresy.  That  heresy  assigns  one  nature  to  Christ, 
and  in  certain  forms  practically  means  that  a 
particular  man  was  taken  and  made  divine  as  a 
whole,  in  his  whole  nature  which  was  one,  and 


THE    MYSTICAL   LIFE  IQI 

therefore  holds  out  to  mankind  the  possibihty  that 
all  may  be  taken  and  made  divine  similarly.    That 
conception   undoubtedly   worked   upon   the   early 
Muslim  mystics ;  they  felt  that  it  was  possible  to  ^ 
reach   a  semi-divinity   within   ourselves. 

Again,  another  influence  which  worked  upon 
them  was  that  of  the  Neoplatonic  philosophy,  or 
rather  theology.  It  affected  them  indirectly 
through  the  Christian  mystics  and  directly 
through  Plotinus.  The  essential  idea  of  It  is  that 
from  God,  the  center,  the  one  source,  there  are 
emissions  of  force;  that  these  emissions  pour  out 
and  gradually  weaken  as  they  pass  down  through 
the  worlds  to  material  things,  but  bring  the 
divinity  also  with  them,  and  that  then,  in  the 
world  of  material  things,  the  soul  of  man,  so 
passed  on,  is  trying  to  find  its  way  back  to  God, 
the  one,  the  origin  of  all.  That  conception 
worked  also  upon  the  Muslim  mystic.  Essen- 
tially it  is  the  feeling  concerning  the  soul  that  it 
is  something  projected  from  God  and  therefore 
something  that  naturally  yearns  back  to  God. 

And  also,  thirdly,  at  an  earlier  date  than  we 
would  perhaps  expect,  there  came  to  bear  the  in- 
fluence of  Buddhism.     The  ascetic  Buddhist  con- 


192  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

ception  appears  side  by  side  with  the  asceticism 
of  the  Christian  hermits.  There  are,  for  example, 
certain  of  the  early  saints  of  Islam,  the  stories  of 
whose  lives  make  it  plain  that  the  influence  of 
the  legend  of  the  life  of  the  Buddha  must  have 
been  working  In  them.  Of  course,  as  that  influ- 
ence gradually  worked  its  way  through  to  the 
West,  it  became  very  much  attenuated.  It  is  to 
be  found  mostly,  in  the  earlier  days,  among  the 
Eastern  saints ;  but  it  is  certainly  there.  It  is  one 
of  the  influences  that  acted  as  a  favorable  soil  to 
hold  the  conceptions  of  Muhammad  himself. 

Then  there  follow  two  developments.  The 
one  of  them  may  be  called  ascetic ;  the  other  was 
speculative  and  theological.  The  one  drift  or 
tendency  limited  itself  very  narrowly  to  the  culti- 
vation of  the  ascetic  life;  to  the  removal  of  the 
screen  of  the  body  that  the  mind — in  Semitic 
phrase,  the  heart — might  see  clearly;  and  also  to 
a  peculiar  reliance  upon  God  alone.  It  resulted, 
and  has  continued  to  result,  in  spite  of  everything, 
in  a  depreciation  of  the  formal  religious  services 
of  Islam  as  opposed  to  free,  individual  devotion. 
Those  who  joined  themselves  to  this  drift  had 
the  feeling  that  there  is  not  any  particular  time  for 


—'<? 


THE   MYSTICAL   LIFE  193 

prayer;  that  prayer  should  be  exercised  always; 
that  the  heart  should  always  be  in  the  attitude 
of  prayer;  and,  finally,  that  the  five  canon- 
ically  ordained  prayers  are  not  in  place,  are  even 
useless  for  him  who  has  reached  the  free  position. 
Of  course,  Islam  very  speedily  passed  beyond  this 
cruder  nonconformity;  but  the  result  was  that 
there  were  left,  side  by  side  with  the  regular 
prayer  services  in  the  mosque  and  otherwise, 
those  free,  individual  services  of  the  darwish 
fraternities.  It  was  as  though  of  the  Methodist 
movement  only  the  class-meetings  had  survived, 
while  the  Methodists  themselves  had  been  reas- 
similated  to  the  National  Church. 

The  other,  the  speculative  development,  went 
very  much  farther.  In  its  extreme  form  it  prac- 
tically became  that  pantheism  which  recognizes 
God  as  the  All;  in  which  all  individuality  is  lost 
in  the  unity  of  God;  in  which  no  personality  can 
survive.  Personality  is  merely  a  speedily  passing 
show  upon  the  mirror  of  this  world. 

Development    in    both    those    directions    went 
on   for   long,   an   unorganized   individual   strug- 
gling, unrecognized  by  the   Muslim   Church   as 
a   whole.     Some  theologians    rejected   it;    some 
13 


/ 


194  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

accepted  it;  all  more  or  less  criticised  it.  The 
mystical  life,  for  a  time  at  least,  was  upon  its 
trial  in  Islam.  It  was  producing  all  the  differ- 
ent forms  and  varying  degrees  of  pantheism ;  all 
that  lies  in  the  conception  of  a  God  immanent 
in  the  world. 

At  last  there  appeared  the  great  constructive 
theologian  to  whom  I  have  already  referred. 
al-Ghazzali.  He  died  in  mi  A.  D.  (A.  H.  505), 
I  and  it  was  his  great  work  to  reduce  to  an  ortho- 
dox possibility  those  mystical  conceptions,  and  to 
find  a  resting  place  for  that  possibility  in  the 
Church  of  Islam.  Certain  elements  in  those 
ideas  undoubtedly  could  not  form  part  of  ortho- 
dox Muslim  theology. 

But  when  he  came  to  his  w^ork  in  that  Church, 
he  found  that  it  was  laid  upon  him  to  revive  its 
religious  life  again.  Scholastic  theology  had 
done  its  work  only  too  well.  It  had  built  up  a 
complete  system,  and  that  system  had  tended  to 
press  all  the  life  out  of  the  religion  of  the  people. 

To  that  system,  then,  of  scholastic  theology, 
al-Ghazzali  added  the  conception  of  the  inner,  or 
spiritual,  light,  now  admitted  in  the  body  of  the 
Church.     He  fixed  how  far  this  must  be  received, 


THE    MYSTICAL   LIFE  195 

how  much  of  such  emotional  hfe  was  absolutely 
necessary.  His  doctrine  may  be  put  thus :  'There 
is,"  he  said,  "a  certain  spiritual  something  (his 
expression  is  very  vagiie)  in  man  by  which  he  is 
different  from  all  the  rest  of  creation.  All  other 
created  things  are  simply  the  external  acts  of 
Allah.  But  in  man  it  is  plain  that  there  is 
something  more.  Hjow  else  does  man  know 
God?  How  can  the  individual  feel  God,  unless 
there  is  some  kinship,  some  connection  there?" 
So  he  laid  it  down  that  man  differed  from  the 
other  creatures  in  that  God  had  breathed  into  him 
of  His  spirit;  but  he  is  very  careful  indeed  to 
avoid  any  definition  of  what  is  meant  by  the  term 
"spirit."  Fortunately,  in  the  Qur'an  (xvii,  87) 
Muhammad  is  directed  to  reply  to  his  questioners 
who  asked  him  about  the  spirit,  "The  spirit  Is  the 
affair  of  thy  Lord;  not  of  thee."  On  this  text 
al-Ghazzall  was  able  to  fall  back.  We  must  not 
ask  what  this  spirit  is;  we  cannot  undei stand 
what  it  is ;  we  cannot  really  grasp  how  there  is  in 
man  something  of  God.  Man  is  not  divine;  yet 
this  fact  stands  fast. 

Thus     we    read     in    the     Qur'an     (xv,     29; 
xxxviii,  'J2)  that  God  breathed  into  man  of  His 


196  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

spirit,  and  in  a  tradition  we  hear  that  God  created 
man  in  His  own  image.  Now  it  is  absurd,  says 
al-Ghazzali,  to  beheve  that  that  can  possibly 
mean  that  God  has  an  image,  an  external  appear- 
ance corresponding  to  that  of  man.  Image,  in 
this  case,  must  mean  nature,  likeness.  Man, 
then,  out  of  all  creation  has  been  created  in  this 
likeness,  with  a  nature  corresponding  to  God's. 
In  man,  then,  there  is  a  something  by  wdiich  he 
can  know  God.  The  heart  of  man  is  his  instru- 
ment for  that  knowledge. 

To  illustrate  this  al-Ghazzall  compares  the 
heart  to  a  great  many  different  things,  among 
them  to  a  mirror  that  has  to  be  polished,  that  is 
to  be  freed  from  the  stains  of  sin  or  of  the  world ; 
or  has  to  have  a  curtain  taken  away  from  it;  or 
has  to  be  turned  in  a  different  direction.  He, 
with  all  Muslim  mystics,  is  fond  of  the  metaphor 
of  the  mirror  in  such  cases.  But  what  he  means 
is  this :  There  is  this  peculiar  instrument  in  man, 
which  he  calls  the  heart  but  which  we  call  the 
mind,  and  which  stands  in  relation  to  the  physical 
heart ;  but  is  not  it.  By  that  instrument  man  can 
know  directly  God  and  the  nature  of  God. 

Further,  what  is  to  be  said  of  the  life,  practice, 


THE   MYSTICAL  LIFE  197 

discipline  of  man  during  this  process  of  learning 
to  know  God?     Here  the  division  between  the 
dogmatic  theology  of  the  scholastics  and  this,  the 
mystical  theology,  becomes  very  plain.     The  dog- 
matic theology  of  the  scholastics  was  worked  out 
on   the  basis    of   authority   and    reason.     There 
were   such   and   such   things   laid   down   in   the 
Qur'an   and   in   the   traditions;   these    could   be 
examined  by  man  and  built  up  by  reasoning  into 
a  definite,  hard  and  fast  system.     Part  of  that 
system  I  have  put  before  you,  and  it,  as  a  whole, 
al-Ghazzali  seems  to  have  accepted.     He  would 
say,  ''We  cannot  help  ourselves ;  that  is  what  was 
given  to  us;  what  our  fathers  have  taught  us. 
We,    of    course,    may    interpret   it    in    different 
ways."     He,   it  is  evident,   at  many  points   dis- 
approved   of    it.     He    was    prepared    to    accept 
every   word  of  the  Qur'an  and   every   word  of 
provably  sound  tradition ;  but  he  must  have  liberty 
to  explain  and  combine  these  as  he  pleased.     He, 
especially,   did  not  think  that  the  current  scho-y- 
lastic  system  would  hold  water  on  the  side  of 
reasoning;  yet  he  was  quite  prepared  to  lay  down 
that  system  in  his  books.     To  criticise  and  recon- 
struct it  would  be  very  hard,  and  would  only 


198  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

shake  the  faith  of  the  masses;  and,  besides,  it 
was  only  the  skeleton,  or  shell,  whichever  you 
prefer,  of  religion. 

But  what  of  religion  itself?  For  the  basis  of 
religion,  al-Ghazzali  went  back  to  the  experience 
of  the  individual  man.  First  of  all  he  cut  away 
any  hope  of  reaching  reality  by  reasoning.  That, 
his  negative  position,  I  have  put  before  you  al- 
ready. But  when  he  had  done  that,  he  went 
back  at  once  and  said,  "In  the  mind  of  man  it- 
self there  is  the  witness  of  God.  If  man  will  fol- 
low the  path,  he  will  attain  unto  the  truth.  For 
the  foundation  of  the  mystical  theology,  then, 
man  must  study  himself;  and  as  he  follows  the 
path,  he  will  find  certain  psychological  states 
appearing,  one  after  another;  some  of  them  will 
be  more  permanent  than  others ;  but  none  will  be 
absolutely  permanent ;  rather,  they  will  flit  across 
this  mirror  of  his  mind  by  which  he  knows  God. 
These  states  he  must  study;  he  must  try  to  lead 
them  steadily  upwards,  that  he  himself  may  be- 
come purer.  If  he  succeeds,  they  will  become 
continuously  more  Intense  and  lasting  until,  it 
may  be,  if  the  stories  are  true  that  are  told  of 
the  most  eminent  of  the  saints,  he  will  be  able 


THE   MYSTICAL   LIFE  199 

to  enter,  even  in  this  life,  into  the  utmost,  the 
absolute  felicity  of  the  direct  vision  of  God." 
Such  are  the  means  and  such  is  the  foundation. 
Thus  alone  can  religion  be  known. 

'  But  even  by  these  means  al-Ghazzali  and  the 
mystics  of  Islam  could  not  free  themselves  en- 
tirely from  the  handicap  of  that  theological  sys- 
tem w^hich  I  have  put  in  part  before  you.  In 
one  of  his  treatises,  for  instance,  he  deals  with 
the  question  of  the  love  of  God,  the  love  of  man 
for  God  and  of  God  for  man.  That  there  is  such 
love  is  for  him  fundamental.  It  is  part  of  the 
knowledge  that  comes  through  the  heart  of  man, 
revealed  in  these  changing  states,  the  psycho- 
logical ladder  of  dead  selves  up  which  man  must 
climb  into  the  very  presence  of  God.  But  what 
does  it  mean?  Can  man  love  God?  It  is  evi- 
dent that  many  Muslim  theologians  had  answered 
at  once,  ''No,  he  cannot.  Man  and  God  are  of 
different  natures.  There  can  be  no  love  where 
there  is  difference,  or — in  the  curious  scholastic 
language — where  there  is  a  difference  of  genus. 
The  most  that  it  can  mean  is  perseverance  in 
obedience  to  Allah.  That  is  all  that  the  love  of 
man  for  Allah   can  be."     In  reply,  al-Ghazzali 


200  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

admits  this  difficulty;  but  he  adds  at  once  that 
there  is  not  this  absolute  difference  between  man 
and  God;  and,  coming  back  to  the  facts,  he  asks 
why  it  is  that  Muhammad  in  the  Qur'an  speaks 
again  and  again  of  Allah  loving  man,  while  the 
saints  have  spoken  again  and  again  of  the  saints 
loving  God.  And  the  Church  of  Islam  has  fol- 
lowed al-Ghazzali,  and  says  that  the  love  of  man 
for  God  is  possible  and  reasonable  and  real. 

But  when  we  pass  to  the  other  side,  the  love 
emanating  from  God  manward,  there  the  problem 
becomes  really  difficult.  Al-Ghazzall  and  a  few, 
indeed,  of  the  more  orthodox  mystics  could  not 
separate  themselves  from  the  idea  that  God  must 
be  above  all  change;  for  change  is  suffering. 
"When  there  is  love,"  said  al-Ghazzali,  ''there 
must  be  in  the  lover  a  sense  of  Incompleteness; 
a  recognition  that  the  beloved  is  needed  for  com- 
plete realization  of  the  self."  That  for  al-Ghaz- 
zali,  you  see,  is  the  essential  in  love.  But  that, 
of  course,  is  impossible  in  the  case  of  God;  He 
is  complete;  He  is  perfect;  man  can  do  nothing 
in  any  way  to  assist  Him  to  supply  His  need,  for 
He  has  no  need.  What,  then,  does  the  love  of 
God  for  man  mean  ?     I  am  afraid  that  here  there 


THE    MYSTICAL   LIFE  201 

comes  a  very  weak  and  impotent  conclusion  to 
the  great  vision.  "The  love  of  God  means  that 
He  removes  the  veil  from  the  heart  of  man;  that 
God  wills  and  has  willed,  from  all  eternity,  that 
man  should  know  Him,  and  that  God  causes 
man  to  know  Him.  There  is  no  reaching  out  on 
the  part  of  God.  He  only  affects  man  so  that 
man  turns  and  goes  out  to  Him ;  there  can  be  no 
change  in  God;  no  development  in  Him;  no  sup- 
plying of  a  lack  in  Himself.  He  only  affects 
man  so  that  man  comes  to  God." 

However,  when  al-Ghazzali  had  worked  out 
this  conception  that  there  is  an  element  in  man 
derived  from  God,  in  what  way  did  he  save  the 
personality  and  peculiar  separateness  of  God? 
He  said  quite  frankly  that  the  one  distinguishing 
thing  in  which  God  was  separate  from  man,  in 
which  man  could  never  come  to  be  one  with  God, 
was  that  God  exists  through  Himself  only.  He 
is  the  only  being  that  exists  through  himself. 
All  others  have  a  dependent  existence  through 
something  else.  And  this  is  the  real  meaning  of 
the  phrase  in  the  Qur'an  about  the  Face  of  Allah. 
The  word  "face"  is  somewhat  ambiguous.  It 
can  mean  "aspect"  and  also  "direction,"  and  the 


202  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

mystical  developers  of  those  texts  chose  to  play 
upon  these  different  meanings.  Everything  has 
an  aspect  to  itself  and  has  also  an  aspect  to  Allah. 
In  respect  to  its  aspect  to  itself,  it  is  really  non- 
existent. It  is  existent  only  in  respect  of  its 
aspect  to  Allah,  and  the  aspect  of  Allah  is  the 
only  thing  that  survives;  all  else  is  fugitive — 
vanishing.  That  is  to  say,  things  exist  only  as 
they  look  towards  Allah. 

But  now,  I  must  hasten  to  close  this  subject. 
Let  me  do  so  with  a  very  brief  consideration  of 
the  development  of  the  organizations  of  dar- 
wishes,  those  bearers  of  the  tradition  of  the  mys- 
tical conception.  From  a  very  early  date  in 
Islam,  certainly  from  the  second  Muslim  century, 
it  came  to  be  common  for  teachers  and  guides  in 
the  religious  life  to  gather  around  them  circles 
of  personal  disciples.  Accompanied  by  these, 
they  wandered  through  the  country,  supported 
by  the  alms  of  the  faithful,  and  taught  theology, 
practical  and  mystical.  For  centuries,  and  this 
is  the  curious  point,  these  organizations  fell  to 
pieces  at  once  with  the  death  of  the  leader.  They 
were  not  self-subsisting  corporations;  they  were 
only  assemblages  of   disciples   round   a  teacher. 


THE    MYSTICAL   LIFE  203 

The  teacher  gone,  they  separated.  Not  until 
about  fifty  years,  I  think,  after  the  death  of 
al-GhazzalT  was  the  situation  passed.  Then  we 
find  one  of  these  schools  turning  into  a  self-per- 
petuating corporation,  taking  the  name  of  its 
founder  and  continuing  to  teach  the  rule  of  life, 
the  monastic  discipline  and  the  exercises  that  he 
had  taught.  It  is  plain  to  my  mind  that  such 
continuous  corporations  could  not  have  come  into 
existence  until  some  time  after  the  death  of 
al-Ghazzali,  because  most  certainly,  if  they  had 
been  in  existence  in  his  time,  there  would  now  be 
a  fraternity  of  Ghazzalite  darwishes.  In  his  last 
years  he  had  gathered  round  him  such  a  school 
of  immediate  disciples.  He  taught  them;  they 
lived  with  him.  But  after  his  death,  evidently, 
they  broke  away;  divided;  vanished.  All  the 
fraternities,  I  have  no  question,  date  from  some 
teacher  that  lived  after  his  day. 

But  if  you  enquire  of  a  darwish  now  as  to  the 
founder  of  his  fraternity — who  he  was,  he  will 
almost  certainly  give  you  the  name  of  some  com- 
panion of  Muhammad  or  of  one  of  the  great  early 
theologians  of  the  first  centuries.  In  each  of  these 
bodies  there  has  grown  up  a  curious  tradition! 


204  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

carrying  them  farther  back  than  their  real  his- 
torical origin  and  saying  that  the  particular 
religious  formulae  and  the  particular  religious 
observances  that  distinguish  them,  were  appointed 
for  them  by  so  and  so  in  the  very  first  generations 
of  Islam,  when  their  fraternity  was  first  instituted. 
This  founder  worked  out  the  Path — such  is  the 
word  they  use — which  they  were  to  follow.  But 
that,  as  I  have  indicated,  is  quite  unhistorical. 

To  another  manifestation  of  this  mystical  life 
I  can  give  only  a  very  few  minutes.  It  is  what 
I  might  call  the  Hierarchy  of  Saints.  Besides 
this  great  body  of  believers,  organized  In  visible 
form  in  the  darwish  fraternities,  the  devout  Mus- 
lim believes — Has  not  Allah  said  In  his  Book 
(x,  63),  "Ho,  the  Friends  of  Allah!  there  Is  no 
fear  upon  them  nor  do  they  grieve"  ? — that  there 
is  also  a  great  invisible  organization  of  saints,  a 
kind  of  spiritual  board  of  administration,  which, 
under  Allah,  is  managing  the  afifairs  of  the  world. 
That  board  has  a  head  who  is  called  the  Qutb,  the 
Axis.  He  is  supposed  to  be  always  the  greatest 
saint  of  his  time  and  he  lives  generally  invisible. 
There  are  certain  places  In  the  Muslim  world 
that  he  peculiarly  haunts,   and  these  places  are 


THE    MYSTICAL   LIFE  205 

visited  by  those  who  would  pray  to  him  or  ask 
his  intercession.  At  one  time  of  the  day  he  is 
beheved,  for  example,  to  be  on  the  roof  of  the 
Ka'ba  at  Mecca,  and  I  imagine  that  every  Mus- 
lim of  the  lower  class  in  Cairo  is  quite  certain 
that  at  another  time  of  the  day  he  is  seated  be- 
hind the  eastern  leaf  of  the  Bab  az-Zuwela,  one 
of  the  three  surviving  gates  of  the  old  City  of 
Cairo.  You  practically  never  can  pass  that  gate 
without  seeing  some  one  leaning  up  against  it, 
evidently  engaged  in  petition  to  this  greatest  of 
all  living  saints  who,  he  supposes,  may  possibly 
be  there  at  the  time. 

Down  from  this  invisible,  absolute  Outb  there 
stretches  a  w^idening  hierarchy.  He  has  four 
assistants  who  can,  on  occasion,  take  his  place. 
If  he  dies,  one  of  them  will  be  chosen  by  Allah  as 
his  successor.  Under  this,  again,  there  is  an- 
other class  of  twelve,  and  so  the  great  hierarchy 
goes  downward,  widening  and  widening,  until  it 
embraces  all  the  saints,  the  Friends  of  Allah,  who 
are  alive. 

In  this  system  and  in  the  help  to  be  derived 
from  these  men  all  the  masses  of  Islam  believe 
with  perfect  fixity.     But  there  are  other  similar 


206  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

helpers  and  guides.  There  is,  first,  the  most 
picturesque  figure  of  all  in  the  mythology  of 
Islam,  that  saint  who  is  called  al-Khadir — the 
name  is  commonly  interpreted  as  meaning  the 
Green  One,  who  is  supposed  to  have  drunk  of  the 
water  of  immortality  and  now  to  be  wandering 
through  the  earth,  carrying  out  the  commands  of 
God.  In  this  he  is  different  from  the  other  saints 
of  the  hierarchy.  He  will  live  until  the  last  day 
comes,  then  will  be  reduced  to  his  dust  and  raised 
again  with  the  rest  of  mankind. 

So  the  pious  Muslim  when  he  finds  himself  in 
difficulty,  on  his  travels  especially,  will  invoke  the 
help  of  al-Khadir,  and  very  many  are  the  stories 
told  of  how  he  has  appeared  under  such  condi- 
tions and  guided  the  fainting  traveler  back  to 
the  road  and  to  safety. 

It  is  very  hard  to  say  what  part  truth  or  mis- 
take, and  what  part  hallucination  have  played  in 
such  things.  But  the  narratives  of  how  the  help 
has  come  are  very  many  indeed.  My  friend  in 
Cairo  who  had  passed  from  Islam  to  Christianity 
told  me  that  he  in  his  Muslim  days  had  once  had 
a  vision  of  al-Khadir.  He  viewed  the  thing 
rather  differently  now  and  thought  that  it  was  a 


THE   MYSTICAL    LIFE  207 

case  of  expectation,  suggestion,  over-fasting  and 
then  hallucination ;  but  I  think  that  still  there  was 
present  in  his  mind  a  little  question,  a  little  wonder 
as  to  the  possibilities  which  might  lie  behind 
those  things.  It  was  to  me  a  strong  testimony 
to  the  reality  of  such  visions  and  experiences 
on  the  part  of  the  darwishes  and  others  that 
this  man  was  very  eager  and  desirous  to  discuss 
with  me  the  modern  theories  of  hallucination 
and  suggestion  in  producing  them.  He  did  not. 
feel  that  he  could  put  them  down  as  simply  non- 
existent, but  that  he  had  to  explain  them  in  some 
way  as  realities. 

And  besides  this  hierarchy  and  al-Khadir,  who 
must  be  classed  rather  with  the  angels,  there  is 
also  the  multitude  of  dead  saints.  The  Muslim 
saint,  you  remember,  is  not  dead  in  our  sense ;  he 
is  there  still  within  his  tomb  which  has  become 
his  house,  and  his  case  differs  from  that  of  the 
ordinary  Muslim  in  that  he  can  leave  his  tomb. 
He  can  go  away  and  journey  and  come  back 
again.  One  Muslim  theologian  of  the  sixteenth 
century  counted  it  as  one  of  the  peculiar  graces 
that  Allah  had  granted  to  him  that  when  he  came 
to  the  tomb  he  had  always,  by  a  kind  of  inspired 


208  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

insight,  been  able  to  know  whether  the  saint  was 
at  home  or  not.  Such  is  the  complete  reality  of 
those  things  for  Muslims.  But  do  not  imagine 
that  they  belong  only  to  the  sixteenth  century; 
they  exist  at  the  present  day.  If  you  are  wander- 
ing about  in  Cairo  and  come  to  a  curious  bend  or 
break  in  the  line  of  the  street,  you  will  find,  built 
somewhere  into  the  corner,  a  dome  covering  the 
tomb  of  a  saint.  He  had  elected  to  be  buried 
there.  Nor  are  the  houses  in  the  neighborhood 
handicapped  in  the  least  by  that  holy  and  perma- 
nent tenant.  It  is  supposed  to  be  a  great  privi- 
leee  to  have  a  house  beside  which  stands  the 
tomb  of  a  saint;  he  will  take  care  of  you;  he  is 
there  and  a  saint  is  always  a  good  neighbor.  In 
this,  as  you  will  perceive,  is  the  difference  be- 
tween the  layout  of  the  streets  of  a  Muslim  town 
and  that  of  the  streets  of  Boston;  these  have  been 
laid  out  by  the  saints.  They  put  down  their 
tombs,  here  and  there,  and  when  they  are  once 
down  they  are  immovable;  the  street  must  go 
round  them;  must  find  some  other  way.  All 
over  Cairo  you  will  find  these  curious  turnings 
and  jags  in  the  streets  where  some  saint  had 
elected  to  be  buried.     When  I  was  in  Cairo  the 


THE   MYSTICAL   LIFE  209 

authorities  of  the  Roman  Cathohc  cathedral,  then 
building,  were  having  much  trouble  with  a  saint 
found  buried  within  its  precincts.  Early  Chris- 
tianity would  quickly  have  discovered  for  him  a 
legend  and  a  date  in  the  calendar,  but  a  solution 
of  such  broad  Catholicism  is  no  longer  possible. 

These,  then,  are  the  more  mysterious,  the  more 
invisible  sides  of  the  mystical  life  in  Islam — the 
hierarchy  of  living  saints;  the  guardianship  of 
al-Khadir,  the  undying  saint,  wandering  through 
the  lands  of  Allah  and  doing  the  will  of  Allah ; 
and  the  presence  everywhere,  at  every  turn,  of 
the  deceased  but  still  very  active  saint.  The  life 
of  the  devout  Muslim  is  hedged  around  every- 
where by  the  Unseen. 


14 


LECTURE  VII 

THE  ATTITUDE  OF  ISLAM  TO  THE  SCRIPTURES 
AND  TO  THE  PERSON  OF  CHRIST 

If  it  were  ever  to  fall  to  you  to  converse  with 
Muslims  upon  the  matter  of  their  feeling  towards 
the  Jewish  and  the  Christian  Scriptures,  towards 
the  Books  as  they  would  call  them,  you  would  at 
once  find  yourselves  entangled  in  the  most  varied 
and  discordant  judgments.^  Some  would  be 
polite;  some  would  not;  some  would  regard  you 
and  say  to  you,  "You  are  People  of  the  Book," 
meaning  by  that,  inspired  Scripture;  "you  have 
the  guidance;  it  is  the  one  spirit."  Others,  I  am 
afraid,  would  indicate  in  one  way  or  another  that 
you  were  of  those  upon  whom  was  the  wrath 
of  God  or  something  similar,  and  that  your  books 
were    forgeries.      Between    those   two    extremes 

^  The  subject  of  the  present  lecture  has  been  so  little 
studied  that  Goldziher's  monograph  in  the  Zeitschrift  of  the 
German  Oriental  Society  (vol.  xxxii,  pp.  341-387),  although 
now  more  than  thirty  years  old,  still  stands  practically 
alone.  I  am  much  indebted  to  it,  as  also,  but  in  less  degree, 
to  Schreiner's  paper  in  the  same  Zeitschrift  (vol.  xlii, 
pp.   591-675). 

210 


ISLAM    AND   THE    SCRIPTURES  211 

you  would  find  that  the  matter  hes  at  the  present 
time. 

I  am  bound  to  say,  however,  that  In  general 
you  would  find  the  Muslims  exceedingly  courte- 
ous in  dealing  with  this  question.  They  would 
not  go  to  the  point  of  telling  you  that  the  wrath 
of  God  was  upon  you,  unless  for  some  distinct 
reason.  Generally,  they  would  escape  from  the 
issue  by  some  polite  commonplaces  about  thej 
People  of  the  Book. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  is  possible  for  the  Mus- 
lim, without  doing  any  injury  to  his  conscience, 
to  adopt  the  most  varied  positions  with  regard  to 
the  Scriptures  of  the  Jews  and  Christians,  and 
that  possibility,  like  almost  everything  else  in 
Islam,  dates  back  to  Muhammad  himself,  and 
to  the  development  which  immediately  followed 
him   and  was  conditioned  by  him. 

On  this  question,  then,  as  practically  on  all 
questions  connected  with  Islam,  we  must  go  back 
and  ask  what  Muhammad  himself  thought  about 
it.  Now,  through  what  I  have  already  put  be- 
fore you  with  regard  to  Muhammad's  person- 
ality, you  will  have  understood  how  absolute  was 
his  belief  that  God  was  wont  to  speak  to  him 


212  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

from  time  to  time  and  that  God  had  sent  him  as 
a  messenger  to  mankind.  For  any  understanding 
at  all  of  Islam,  and  if  the  character  of  Muham- 
mad himself  is  to  become  in  the  least  intelligible 
to  us,  we  must  take  that  as  a  fundamental  position. 
Otherwise  we  shall  be  involved  In  a  hopeless 
psychological  problem.  So,  In  this  instance,  only 
by  taking  such  a  position  towards  Muhammad 
and  realizing  that  such  was  his  attitude,  can  we 
understand  how  he  felt  towards  the  Scriptures  of 
the  older  faiths.  Muhammad,  then,  was  certain 
— knew  as  absolutely  as  any  man  could  know — 
that  he  was  a  messenger  from  God  sent  to  man- 
kind,  a  guide  appointed  by   God   for  mankind. 

But  what,  further,  was  the  situation  round  him 
as  seen  by  him?  That  situation,  unfortunately, 
we  can  learn  only  from  the  Qur'an  itself.  If 
we  attempt  to  gain  any  Idea  of  it  from  the  tradi- 
tions that  have  been  handed  down  to  us  of  what 
Muhammad  said  and  did,  we  shall  find  that  these 
cannot  be  trusted.  We  shall  find  that  the  real 
use  of  these  traditions  is  to  picture  for  us  the 
later  controversies  rather  than  to  give  us  the 
mind  of  Muhammad  himself. 

And  in  the  Qur'an,  what  do  we  find?     We 


ISLAM    AND   THE    SCRIPTtPRES  2I3 

find  that  for  Muhammad,  looking  out  on  the 
world,  there  was  one  great  division  amongst 
mankind.  He  divides  them  into  those  whom 
he  calls  "the  People  of  the  Book" — meaning  by 
that,  as  we  have  seen,  the  People  of  Scripture, 
whether  one  book  or  several — and  into  others 
whom  he  calls  at  one  time  "the  straying  people," 
at  another  time,  "the  rebellious  people" — the 
people,  that  is  to  say,  who  had  not  a  guidance 
from  Allah,  or  the  people  who  had  risen  against 
that  guidance,  and  were  rebellious  against  Allah. 

Further,  what  was  his  idea  about  those  books 
of  Scripture?  He  uses  the  phrase,  "the  People 
of  the  Book,"  which  could  mean  also  "of  the 
Books."  Whence  were  those  books?  Or  he 
speaks  of  those  people  as  "the  people  that  are 
rightly  guided,"  were  rightly  guided  once, 
though  now  they  have  gone  astray.  What  did 
this  guidance  mean?  Who  had  been  their 
guides  ? 

But  when  we  begin  to  look  Into  this  problem 
of  what  Muhammad  understood  behind  those 
mysterious  "books"  and  by  this  "guidance,"  we 
are  at  once  convinced  that  he  had  really  very 
little  knowledge  in  any  definite  form.     It  is  one 


214  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

of  the  most  outstanding  peculiarities  of  Muham- 
mad's mind  that  he  could  not,  apparently,  get 
any  clear  idea  of  a  story  on  hearing  it,  and  far 
less  could  he  rehearse  a  story  in  distinct,  histor- 
ical form  after  he  had  once  heard  it.  The  way 
that  such  things  came  to  him  seems  to  have  been 
very  much  like  this :  He  got  a  scrap  of  history ; 
he  got  an  allusion;  he  got  a  telling  phrase;  he 
got  a  hint  of  a  character.  He  carried  that  away, 
and  then  with  that  as  a  centre  and  with  his  broad 
idea  of  the  story — generally  a  very  inaccurate 
idea — as  material,  he  built  up  for  himself  again 
what  he  had  heard. 

Or  it  may  have  been  some  scrap  of  the  Scrip- 
tures which  he  had  heard  once  or  twice ;  some  bit 
which  he  had  picked  up  from  hearing  the  Psalms 
read;  something  he  had  heard  at  a  Christian 
service  of  worship,  a  phrase,  perhaps,  from  the 
chanting  of  the  Magnificat;  there  were  many 
fragments  of  that  kind  of  which  the  words  had 
caught  his  memory.  It  was  only  a  very  short 
phrase  that  he  could  hold  in  that  memory  of  his; 
so  he  would,  then,  piece  and  mend  it  into  what 
seemed  right  to  him  in  the  nature  of  the  case. 
Thus,  he  felt  sure,  it  must  have  run.     That  was 


ISLAM    AND    THE    SCRIPTURES  215 

practically  all  that  he  had  on  which  to  go  when 
he  tried  to  reconstruct  this  hypothetical  history 
of  "the  People  of  the  Book,"  on  the  one  hand 
and  of  the  unbelievers,  the  strayers,  the  rebellious, 
on  the  other  hand. 

Let  me,  now,  take  a  special  case  of  this  quoting 
by  Muhammad ;  it  will  illustrate  the  curious  diffi- 
culty of  the  problem  that  we  have.  In  the 
Qur'an  (vi,  156)  Muhammad  says  that  he  is 
"written"  in  the  former  sacred  books,  evidently 
meaning  that  there  is  a  prophecy  or  description 
of  him  in  the  Scriptures  of  the  Christians  and 
of  the  Jews.  But  in  one  passage  (Qur.  Ixi,  6) 
he  is  more  precise  and  makes  Jesus  say,  "I  give 
you  tidings  of  a  Messenger  who  shall  come  after 
me,  whose  name  shall  be  Ahmad."  That  is  a 
perfectly  clear  statement,  and  the  allusion,  up 
to  a  certain  point,  is  clear  also.  It  is  clear  that 
here  we  have  an  allusion — picked  up  in  what  way 
and  in  what  blind  form  we  cannot  tell — to  the 
promise  of  the  Comforter  (John's  Gospel,  xiv, 
16,  26;  XV,  26;  xvi,  7).  But  why  does  he  name 
that  Messenger  to  come,  Ahmad?  That  was 
not  Muhammad's  name.  Apart  from  this  pas- 
sage there  is  no  tradition  that  that  was  ever  his 


2l6  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

name.     It  is  true  that  his  original,  heathen  name 
is  unknown,  but  it  was  not  Ahmad.     Muslims, 
certainly,  have  applied  that  name  to  him,  but  only 
because  of  this  passage.     Is  it  in  any  way  pos- 
sible— this  has  been  the  conjecture — that  in  some 
Arabic  translation  of  the  Gospels,  by  a  curious 
accident  perhaps  complicated  by  mis-hearing  on 
the  part  of  Muhammad  himself,  the  word  Ahmad, 
"the  greatly  praised,"  or  the  "greatly  praising," 
could    have    been    used    for    Paraclete?     Some 
have  even  suggested  that  in  the  Greek  text  of 
John,  TTcptKXvTos  may  have  been  read  instead  of 
TrapoLKXrjTO':  ;  Trc/aiKXvTos  might  be  translated  Ahmad. 
We  cannot  tell;  there  the  case  stands.     This  is 
the  one,  definite,  clear  statement  that  Muhammad 
himself  made,  referring  to  a  prophecy  of  him- 
self in  the  former  sacred  books.     But  you  see, 
even  in  itself,  how  vague,  how  grasped  out  of 
the  clouds  in  a  sense,  it  is. 

The  case  being  thus,  Muhammad  was  practi- 
cally cast  back  upon  himself  and  his  own  ideas 
to  work  out  a  philosophy  of  the  history  of  revela- 
tion, and  that  he  did  with  great  thoroughness. 
There,  before  him,  were  the  Jews ;  there  were  the 
Christians;  there  was  a  people  whom  he  called 


ISLAM    AND   THE    SCRIPTURES  21/ 

the  Sabians — we  are  in  doubt  as  to  whom  he 
meant  by  these — and  there  were  the  Maglans. 
He   reckons   in   the    Magians   as   a    "People   of 
Scripture,"  in  one  passage  only  (Qur.  xxii,  17), 
and  by  them  he  apparently  means  the  Zoroas- 
trians;  so,  at  least,  the  Muslims  have  understood 
the  passage.     In  other  places   (Qur.  liii,  37-38; 
Ixxxviii,  19)  he  speaks  of  the  Leaves  of  Abra- 
ham.    These  are  certain  rolls  or  leaves,  believed 
now  to  be  lost  but  supposed  to  be  the  ultimate 
basis  of  the  religious  faith  of  the  Sabians  and 
Magians.     In    the    case    of   the   Jews    and   the 
Christians,  he  speaks  of  the  Law,  of  the  Psalms 
and  of  the  Gospel.     These  were  the  record,  all 
that  was  left  in  written  form,  of  the  revelations 
made  to  the  world  by  a  series  of  prophets  who 
had  come  in  succession,  one  after  another,  but 
sometimes   with    long   gaps   between,    from  the 
beginning  of  creation  down  to  Muhammad's  own 
time.     God  had   never   left   Himself   without   a 
witness;  either  the  witness  of  the  personal  guid- 
ance of  one  of  those  prophets,   or  the  witness 
of  the  book  which  he  had  left  behind  him.     Later 
Islam  built  up  an  elaborate  doctrine  of  two  kinds 
of  prophets — those  who  brought  a  book  and  those 


2l8  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

who  did  not — and  reckoned  their  numbers,  and, 
so  far  as  it  could,  their  names.  Muhammad  had 
only  told  stories  about  individuals.  Later  Islam 
developed  a  doctrine  of  saints  with  a  minor 
inspiration  variously  defined.  With  this  Muham- 
mad would,  undoubtedly,  have  been  in  full  accord. 
And  what  had  been  sent  by  means  of  those 
prophets  and  messengers?  It  had  been  the  one 
only  true,  unchangeable,  undevelopable,  inflexible 
faith.  It  had  been  Islam.  At  the  beginning  of 
creation,  when  Allah  created  Adam  he  appointed 
him  his  representative  upon  earth,  communicated 
to  him  the  faith  of  Islam,  told  him  what  was 
its  law,  what  were  its  rites  and  ceremonies — the 
outward  manifestations  of  that  faith,  and  gave 
him  command  to  teach  these  to  mankind.  After 
his  death  mankind  lapsed  and  fell  away  from  the 
truth.  Then  another  prophet  came  who  was 
commissioned  by  Allah  to  restore  that  primeval 
faith.  After  his  death  mankind  lapsed  again; 
then  another  prophet  was  sent,  and  so  down 
through  the  long  generations  you  have  the  con- 
tinual bringing  back  and  restoration  of  the  one, 
unchangeable  faith.  It  is  a  scheme  of  the 
philosophy  or  the  history  of  revelation  that  would 


ISLAM    AND   THE    SCRIPTURES  219 

bring  joy  to  the  heart  of  the  most  absolute  tradi- 
tionaHst.     I  do  not  imagine  that  any  other  great 
formative    religious    mind    ever    constructed    so 
absolutely  unchangeable,  unreformable  a  faith  as 
this.     But  still,  that  was   the  conception  which 
Muhammad  held.     And  what  of  his  part  in  it? 
He   was    simply   the   last   of   the   prophets;   the 
renewer  of  the  one  primeval  faith  in  this  age  of 
darkness;  the  restorer  of  the  truth  to  mankind. 
Yet   with   this    difference;    never  before    had    a 
prophet  been  sent  to  the  Meccans;  it  was  now 
come  to  be  their  turn ;  they  were  to  have  the  great 
privilege  of  being  the  People  of  Allah;  of  being 
the  kindred  of  the  Prophet  of  Allah. 

Now,  with  such  a  view  as  this — worked  out, 
as  you  will  notice,  in  the  most  absolute  fashion, 
reminding  one  more  than  anything  else  of  the 
scheme  of  history  that  lies  behind  the  Book  of 
Judges,  where  we  have  a  string  of  Judges,  each 
bringing  back  the  rebellious  Israel  to  the  Lord, 
with  the  rebellious  Israel  thereafter  breaking 
away  again  and  being  brought  back  by  another 
Judge  to  the  Lord — what,  then,  having  such  a 
view  as  this,  must  have  been  his  feeling  about 
the    People    of    Scripture?     These    Jews,    these 


220  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

Christians,  whom  he  met,  possessed,  ex  hypothesi, 
the  sacred  books  that  were  left  to  them  by  Moses ; 
left  to  them  by  Jesus;  left  to  them  by  David. 
Those  sacred  books  must  contain  exactly  the  same 
things  which  he  believed  that  Allah  had  revealed 
to  him.  In  those  sacred  books  must  lie  that  same 
law  of  Islam;  those  same  practices  and  rites; 
that  same  faith.  He  had  only  to  turn  to  the 
Jews  and  Christians,  tell  them  what  he  was,  tell 
them  what  had  been  revealed  to  him,  and  they 
would  say  at  once,  'This  is  a  prophet  from 
God."  Further,  he  had  heard  enough  about 
prophecies  in  those  Scriptures — each  prophet  fore- 
telling the  coming  of  his  successor — to  feel  sure 
that  such  books  must  contain  prophecies  describ- 
ing him  himself.  The  Jews  and  the  Christians 
must  certainly  admit  that  he  was  the  prophet 
foretold. 

But,  unfortunately,  he  found  that  they  would 
not;  that  they  did  not  recognize  him;  that  they 
said,  "That  is  not  the  true  faith ;  nor  do  we  find 
in  our  sacred  books  any  prophecy  at  all,  any 
description  at  all  of  such  a  one  as  you  are.  We 
see  no  reason  whatever  to  think  that  we  should 
leave  our  ancient  positions,  the  ways  in  which 


ISLAM    AND   THE    SCRIPTURES  221 

our  fathers  walked,  and  come  and  follow  you." 
What,  then,  did  Muhammad  say?     He  came 
to    the   conclusion    that    they,    personally,    were 
exhibiting  the  most  consummate  hypocrisy.    And, 
with   regard  to  their  books,  what  he  said  was, 
^'Do  not  listen  to  the  Jews  and  the  Christians  as 
to  what  they  say  of  the  faith;  they  'twist  their 
tongues  in  it'  " — that  was  his  phrase  (Qur.  iii,  72; 
iv,    48).     That   phrase   makes   it   clear   that  he 
believed  that  they  misrepresented  what  actually 
was  in  their  sacred  books.     In  their  books  was 
Islam    and    the    prophecy    of    the    coming    of 
Muhammad,  but  they  concealed  these  things  and 
perverted   the   truth.     And   it    is    further   plain 
that   Muhammad   reached   this   conclusion   from 
a  feeling  of  the  necessity  of  the  case.     He  did 
not  go  back  to  the  books  themselves;  he  could 
not;  they  were  not  accessible  to  him.     It  was 
the  overwhelming  sense  of  the  reality  of  his  mis- 
sion which  drove  him  to  this. 

But  what  was  his  final  position,  seeing  that  he 
had  been  received  in  this  way  by  the  holders  of 
the  old  faiths?  It  was  simply,  *Tet  them  alone; 
they  will  not  hear;  they  have  hardened  their 
hearts;   it  Is   impossible   to   do   any   more   with 


222  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

them;  let  them  go."  And  to  the  Muslims  he 
said,  "You  have  no  more  need  of  them  nor  of 
their  books;  do  not  listen  to  them;  do  not  hear 
what  they  have  to  say;  there  is  no  need  of  it. 
If  they  read  to  you  what  is  written  in  their 
books,  it  is  really  the  same  as  what  I  have  told 
you;  and  if  they  do  not  read  what  is  written  in 
their  books,  then  it  is  lies.  You  have  the  truth  in 
what  I  have  brought ;  hold  by  that ;  it  is  sure  and 
safe  for  this  world  and  for  the  world  to  come." 
This  was,  of  course,  a  perfectly  sufficient 
position  during  Muhammad's  lifetime.  So  long 
as  they  had  this  infallible  prophet  to  guide  them 
and  to  tell  them  the  truth,  they  need  not  go 
further.  The  problem  was  over  for  the  time 
being.  But  when  he  died,  they  had  no  longer  that 
absolutely  infalHble  guide.  When  they  wanted 
to  hear  what  had  been  the  story  about  this  or 
that  person  in  past  generations ;  when  they  wanted 
to  know  what  was  the  exact  bearing  and  force 
of  this  or  that  theological  truth;  they  could  not 
go  to  him  any  longer.  They  were  driven  back 
to  the  Qur'an;  they  were  driven  back  to  the 
memory  of  what  he  had  said ;  but  they  began  also 
to   fall  back   upon  those  same  despised   Jewish 


ISLAM    AND    THE    SCRIPTURES  22^, 

and  Christian  Scriptures.  And  here  came  the 
nemesis,  sprung  partly  from  Muhammad's  wild 
statements,  partly  from  the  attitude  of  mind 
which  he  had  fostered  in  his  followers.  The 
Muslims,  in  consequence,  had  and  have  a  certain 
bias  or  standing  presupposition  with  regard  to 
those  Scriptures,  and,  however  the  Scriptures 
come  to  their  knowledge,  that  has  always  made 
itself  felt.  Now,  there  are  four  ways  in  which 
the  Scriptures  have  come  to  Islam.  They  have 
come  through  proselytes ;  they  have  come  through 
controversy;  they  have  come — this  to  a  slight 
extent — through  the  studies  of  their  own  histo- 
rians; and  they  have  come — perhaps  to  a  still 
slighter  extent — through  the  direct  reading  of 
the  books  themselves.  Let  me  take  up  those  four 
sources  one  by  one;  but  remember,  as  I  go  over 
them,  that  they  all,  for  the  Muslim  mind,  became 
inextricably  mixed  up  together;  that  a  Muslim 
has,  behind  his  feeling  about  the  Scriptures  of 
the  Jews  and  the  Christians,  simply  a  great,  con- 
fused jumble  of  discordant  ideas  derived  in  all 
these  different  ways;  he  has  never  applied  criti- 
cism to  that  jumble;  he  has  never  tried  to  think 
the  thing  out;  he  may  tell  you  one  thing  at  one 


\\ 


224  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

time  and  another  thing  at  another  time,  just  as 
he  may  pull  out  from  that  jumble  now  one  thing 
and  now  another. 

First,  then,  with  regard  to  proselytes.  There 
especially  was  the  nemesis  felt.  The  Arabs  had 
a  curious,  childlike  trust  in  writing,  In  books. 
People  who  could  read  books,  they  thought,  must 
know  everything.  But  they  knew  that  the  Jews 
and  Christians  with  whom  they  were  In  contact 
had  books  and  could  read  them.  In  consequence 
they  got  Into  the  way  of  appealing  to  the  Jews 
and  Christians,  asking  them  about  the  histories 
of  the  past  kings  and  generations ;  about  the  long 
gone  by  times  of  the  world  with  its  prophets  and 
sages;  and  those  whom  they  asked  told  them 
very  strange  things  Indeed.  You  must  remember 
that  they  were  mostly  proselytes,  Jews  and  Chris- 
tians who  had  embraced  Islam  and  who  had  a 
very  definite  feeling  as  to  what  it  was  safe  and 
desirable  for  them  to  say.  They  were  well  aware 
of  the  general  position  held  by  the  Muslims  with 
regard  to  Islam  and  its  truth  and  Its  place  In  the 
eternal  scheme;  anything  that  they  told  those 
Muslims  must  square  with  that.  But,  on  another 
side,  they  discovered  that  the  more  marvelous 


ISLAM    AND   THE    SCRIPTURES  225 

were  the  tales  that  they  told,  provided  they 
squared  with  that  fundamental  necessity,  the 
better  these  tales  would  be  received.  Under  that 
spirit  and  pressure,  the  tremendous  growth  of 
legend  that  immediately  appeared  is  simply 
indescribable. 

For  instance,  at  a  very  early  date,  we  find 
stories  which  confuse  the  books  of  the  Law  (the 
Pentateuch)  with  the  Tables  of  the  Law  (the 
Ten  Commandments)  and  which  describe  how 
many  thousands  of  the  books  of  the  Law  there 
were,  and  how  many  camels  it  took  to  carry  them. 
And,  again,  we  are  told,  from  information  com- 
ing from  those  Jewish  proselytes,  that  the  Law 
consisted  of  one  thousand  parts,  and  that  to  carry 
it  would  take  seventy  camels,  and  that  only 
four — Moses,  Joshua,  Ezra  and  Jesus — had  ever 
read  it  through  completely.  And  with  this  there 
went  a  calmness  of  assertion  which  must  strike 
us  with  admiration.  One  would  say,  *T  have 
read  in  the  Torah,"  and  then  he  would  go  on  to 
give  something  very  much  like  the  above. 
Another  said, — and  this  I  will  give  you  liter- 
ally— "I  found  in  the  Gospel  that  the  keys  of  the 
treasury  of  Qarun  [Qarun  is  the  Biblical  Korah; 
15 


226  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

evidently  also  Croesus  who  has  suffered  an  orien- 
tal change]  were  a  load  for  sixty  mules;  no 
key  was  larger  than  a  finger,  and  each  served  for 
a  separate  treasury."  Curiously  enough,  the 
only  part  of  the  Scriptures  that  seems  to  be  given 
in  a  form  in  the  least  degree  rational  is  the 
Wisdom  Literature.  From  the  Wisdom  Litera- 
ture a  certain  number  of  tolerably  recognizable 
quotations  have  come  down  to  us  over  the  lips  of 
those  proselytes. 

But,  further,  it  was  not  only  those  proselytes 
who  behaved  in  this  way.  The  Arabs  have  always 
loved  to  hear  stories.  The  Arabian  NigJits,  for 
that  matter,  is  only  one  book  in  a  very  large 
class,  and  as  the  earliest  Muslims  were  Arabs, 
on  the  one  hand,  and  loved  to  hear  stories,  but 
were  Muslims,  on  the  other  hand,  and  were  very 
pious,  naturally  the  stories  they  loved  to  hear 
most  were  pious  stories  about  the  past  prophets. 

Therefore  a  class  of  storv-tellers  arose  who 
devoted  themselves  to  developing  and  perfecting, 
in  a  sense,  the  materials  that  had  been  handed 
over  by  the  proselytes.  Of  course,  the  more 
sober  element  in  the  Muslim  Church  protested 
against  that;  there  w^as  bitter  war  between  the 


ISLAM    AND    THE    SCRIPTURES  227 

professional   traditionalists   and   the   professional 
story-tellers;  neither  could  stand  the  other. 

There  is  a  story  told  of  Ahmad  ibn  Hanbal  and 
Yahya  ibn  Mu'In,  two  of  the  greatest  tradition- 
alists, probably  better  known  by  sight  in  Baghdad 
than  the  Caliph  himself,  and  thorough  scholars, 
that  they  were  one  day  In  the  mosque  and  saw 
one  of  these  story-tellers  sitting  with  his  back 
against  a  pillar  and  a  circle  round  him.  He  was 
telling  them  a  long  tale  of  how,  whenever  any 
one  pronounces  the  words  La  ildha  illa-lldh,  Allah 
creates  out  of  every  word  a  bird  with  a  beak  of 
gold  and  wings  of  diamonds,  and,  what  was 
worse,  kept  saying  at  every  turn,  "I  heard  these 
things  direct  from  Ahmad  ibn  Hanbal  and  Yahya 
ibn  Mu'in  themselves."  At  last  Yahya  could 
not  stand  it  any  longer  and  walked  up  to  him  and 
said,  "Oh  brother,  I  have  heard  you  saying  this 
thing,  that  thing  and  the  other  thing,  and  you 
say  that  you  derived  them  from  Ahmad  ibn 
Hanbal  and  Yahya  ibn  Mu'in.  Now,  I  am 
Yahya  and  this  is  Ahmad  ibn  Hanbal,  and  we 
have  never  heard  them  In  our  lives  before." 
Thereupon  the  story-teller  looked  upon  him  with 
a  very  severe  and  majestic  countenance  and  said, 


228  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

*'Oh  thou,  thy  name  may  be  Yahya  ibn  Mu'in 
and  the  name  of  this  man  may  be  Ahmad  ibn 
Hanbal.  Are  ye  the  only  men  of  these  names 
among  the  people  of  Muhammad?  I  have  tradi- 
tions from  seventeen  men  who  are  so  called." 
Against  competition  of  such  courage  and  popu- 
larity the  traditionalists  with  a  conscience  could 
do  almost  nothing,  and,  In  consequence,  the 
misinformation  of  the  proselytes  was  a  hundred- 
fold further  bedevilled  with  the  stories  of  those 
religious  novelists. 

And  the  results  of  their  labours  abide  to  this 
day.  They  have  Infected  the  whole  devotional 
literature  of  Islam  and  furnish  the  staple  religious 
reading  of  the  masses  at  present.  Thus  the 
earliest  source  is  also  the  most  persistent. 

For  example,  if  we  turn  to  al-Ghazzali,  to  whom 
I  have  referred  again  and  again  and  who  died 
in  nil  A.  D.  (A.  H.  505),  we  find  him  saying 
very  gravely,  "Moses  says  in  the  Law,  *Rend  your 
hearts  and  not  your  garments'."  Evidently  it 
never  occurred  to  him  to  verify  his  words;  and  as 
for  the  stories  here  is  one  from  al-Ghazzali 
himself  almost  as  good  as  the  story  of  the  treas- 
ury of  Qarun : — There  was  In  the  time  of  Moses 


ISLAM    AND   THE    SCRIPTURES  229 

a  certain  negro  saint,  Barkh  by  name.  When 
rain  failed  the  children  of  Israel  for  seven  years, 
Allah  told  Moses  to  entreat  Barkh  to  pray  for 
it.  He  did  so  in  a  prayer  full  of  familiarity  and 
daring,  and  rain  came  at  once.  To  Moses  Allah 
explained,  "I  always  hear  what  Barkh  says;  he 
makes  me  laugh  three  times  a  day." 

But  the  demoralization  that  followed  went 
farther.  Take,  for  instance,  the  great  theologian, 
ar-Razi,  who  died  in  1209  A.  D.  (A.  H.  606), 
a  man  in  the  rank  only  after  al-Ghazzali  himself. 
In  his  commentary  on  the  Qur'an,  he  tells  us 
very  gravely  in  one  place,  that  he  knows  and 
can  repeat  the  Law  and  Gospel  both  by  heart, 
and  then,  throughout  his  commentary,  he  gives 
us  the  most  mysterious  and  wonderful  things 
as  being  contained  in  that  Law  and  in  that 
'Gospel.  Now,  what  can  such  a  phenomenon 
mean?  Had  the  whole  moral  sense,  all  feeling 
for  fact,  been  rotted  away  by  lightness  of  belief? 
This  man  was  a  great  theologian  and  yet  he  could 
play  fast  and  loose  in  this  fashion. 

Much  later  in  the  history  of  Islam  other 
proselytes  made  other  contributions  to  Muslim 
knowledge  of  the  Scriptures.     Upon  these  con- 


230  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

tributions  I  can  only  touch.  While  much  more 
trustworthy  in  point  of  fact,  they  were  intensely 
hostile  in  spirit.  Their  contributors  were  pros- 
elytes who  passed  over  directly  from  Europe 
into  Islam,  and  who  carried  with  them  the  doubts 
and  scepticism  of  the  European  renaissance.  The 
best  known  and  probably  the  most  picturesque 
figure  among  them  is  a  certain  Frater  Anselmo  de 
Turmeda,  a  Franciscan  friar,  one  of  the  founders 
and  one  of  the  most  popular  writers  of  the  Catalan 
national  literature,  a  man  whose  books,  pointed 
with  savage  almost  Swiftian  satire,  are  still  read 
in  Spain. ^  He  went  over  to  Tunis  early  in  the 
fifteenth  century,  became  a  Muslim  there  and 
wrote  a  book  against  Christianity  and  in  criticism 
of  the  Gospels  which  shows  what  was  the  atti- 
tude towards  Christianity  in  what  one  might 
call  the  educated,  sceptical  circles  of  his  time. 
Another  must  have  been  the  unknown  author  of 
the  Gospel  of  Barnabas.  Their  books  furnished 
most  of  the  arguments  still  used  by  Muslim 
controversialists,  who  have  taken  them,  just  as 
they  took  the  earlier  stories,   with  entire   faith. 

*The   best    reference    for    him    is    Menendez    y    Pelayo, 
Origenes  de  la  Novela,  Vol.  I,  pp.  cv-cx. 


ISLAM    AND    THE    SCRIPTURES  23 1 

From  all  these  instances  it  is  plain  that  Mus- 
lims in  general  did  not,  or  could  not,  verify  ^" 
their  references.  And,  secondly,  we  know  that 
they  were  afraid  to  do  so.  They  were  prepared 
to  accept  those  scraps  and  arguments  which  were 
given  to  them  by  proselytes  to  their  own  faith, 
but  they  themselves  feared  to  risk  their  faith 
by  reading  those  Scriptures.  As  medieval  Chris- 
tendom believed  that  any  one  reading  Hebrew 
would  become  a  Jew,  so  the  Muslims  would  not 
take  any  chances  which  might  be  involved  in 
meddling  with  Law  or  Gospel. 

The  second  element  was  the  knowledge  that 
came  through  controversy.  For  its  beginnings 
we  must  go  back  to  the  early  times  of  Islam. 
When  we  take  the  writings  of  John  of  Damascus, 
the  great  Father  of  the  Greek  Church  and  the 
final  formulator  of  its  theology,  who  died  some- 
where after  754  A.  D.,  we  find  that  the  Muslims 
did  not  then  ascribe  any  miracles  to  Muhammad 
and  did  not  allege  that  there  were  any  prophecies 
of  Muhammad  in  the  sacred  books  of  Christen- 
dom. But  as  we  go  on,  starting  from  that  point 
of  departure,  it  is  clear  that  there  was  an 
immediate     growth    through     controversy     and 


232  ASPECTS   OF    ISLAM 

especially  through  the  necessity  of  meeting  such 
claims  on  the  part  of  Christians.  On  the  one 
hand,  it  was  a  growth  of  what  you  might  call 
the  legend  of  Muhammad,  and,  on  the  other  hand, 
it  was  a  change  of  attitude  towards  the  former 
sacred  books.  Muslims  began,  from  that  time 
on,  to  assert  that  miracles  had  been  performed 
by  Muhammad.  It  is  true  that  he  had  never, 
himself,  claimed  that  power.  Again  and  again 
he  had  said,  '^I  cannot  work  miracles.  The  old 
prophets  came  working  miracles.  Did  the  peo- 
ple believe  in  them  any  more  on  that  account? 
I  come  with  only  this  Book,  given  to  me  by 
Allah,  which  is  ample  evidence  in  itself.  It 
should  be  enough."  But  it  was  not  enough  for 
later  Islam.  They  soon  discovered  for  him 
miracles  in  abundance,  constructed,  mostly,  in 
imitation  of  the  miracles  of  the  Gospels.  And 
they  also  changed  their  attitude  towards  the 
former  sacred  books.  *'You  tell  us  that  there  are 
no  prophecies,"  said  they,  ''of  Muhammad  in 
these  books.  Then  there  must  be  something 
wrong  with  the  books."  They  did  not  say  any 
longer,  as  Muhammad  had  done,  "The  readers  of 
the   books   deceive  us   when  they   read."     They 


ISLAM    AND    THE    SCRIPTURES  233 

carried  their  accusation  to  the  books  themselves. 

But  as  to  what  was  wrong,  they  varied  and 
divided  into  different  schools.  Some  held  that 
there  were  only  omissions  in  the  books;  that  the 
prophecies  concerning  Muhammad  had  been  cut 
out.  Others  held  that  the  books  were  actually 
corrupted.  But  this  was  a  hard  thing  for  the 
Muslims  to  believe.  Was  it  conceivable  that  a 
sacred  book  sent  down  by  Allah  could  ever  suffer 
such  a  thing  as  that?  For  a  great  many  it  was 
inconceivable.  'There  can,"  they  said,  *'only  be 
omissions  in  them;  perhaps  there  may  also  be 
additions;  but  no  corruptions."  You  see,  then, 
how  many  different  attitudes  of  mind  were,  and 
are,  possible  amongst  the  Muslims  towards  those 
books.  Some  would  hold,  "The  books  are  com- 
pletely corrupted ;  have  nothing  to  do  with  them." 
Others  would  hold,  'There  are  only  some  omis- 
sions," and  others,  ''only  omissions  and  addi- 
tions." All  these  different  attitudes  are  mirrored 
for  us  in  traditions  which  gave  us  supposed  state- 
ments of  Muhammad  himself.  Each  thus  can 
claim  to  have  the  Prophet  behind  it. 

But  gradually  Muslims  began  to  find,  even  in 
those  books  themselves,   as   they   read   them   or 


234  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

had  them  read  to  them,  actual  prophecies  of 
Muhammad.  This  once  begun,  the  hunt  for  such 
texts  became  an  absorbing  interest  and  went  on 
until  over  fifty  distinct  prophecies  had  been 
found  by  Muslim  theologians  between  the  Old 
and  the  New  Testaments.  Of  course,  a  great 
many  of  these  are  simply  the  result  of  corruption 
of  the  text.  Others  are  very  curious  bits  of 
exegesis,  and  still  others  are  due  to  unblushing 
insertion  of  names  and  references,  probably 
mostly  by  proselytes,  and  show  how  little  fear 
they  had  that  these  statements  would  ever  be 
verified. 

I  select  now  a  few  to  put  before  you,  which 
were  found  satisfactory  by  al-Beruni  ^  himself, 
who  was,  I  think,  quite  certainly  the  clearest 
scientific  mind  alive  in  his  day  (about  A.  D. 
looo).  These  are  no  phantasies  of  theologians 
but  accepted  scientific  facts  of  their  time. 

The  first  of  them  is  in  Deut.  i8,  i8,  where 
we  read,  'T  will  raise  them  up  a  prophet  from 
among  their  brethren,  like  unto  thee;  and  will 
put  my  words  in  his  mouth  and  he  shall  speak 
unto  them  all  that  I  shall  command  him."     No-?^. 

^  Chronology,  trans,  by  Sachau,  pp.  22  f. 


ISLAM    AND   THE    SCRIPTURES  235 

the  method  by  which  this  was  brought  to  bear 
upon  Muhammad  is  interesting.  You  will  notice 
that  it  says,  "a  prophet  from  among  their 
brethren."  Evidently  this  was  not  to  be  from 
among  the  children  of  Israel,  because  it  could 
not  be  "from  among  their  brethren"  in  that  case. 
"Brethren"  leaves  only  two  possibilities,  Ishmael 
and  Esau.  As  for  Esau,  the  only  prophet  of  the 
line  of  Esau  is  Job,  and  Job  had  flourished  before 
Muhammad  himself.  We  are  then  left  with  the 
other  possibility  that  this  prophet  must  be  from 
the  sons  of  Ishmael,  and  there  had  been  no  man 
raised  up,  claiming  to  be  a  prophet,  of  the  sons 
of  Ishmael  except  Muhammad. 

Again,  in  Deut.  33,  2,  "The  Lord  came  forth 
from  Sinai  and  rose  up  from  Seir  unto  them; 
he  shined  forth  from  Mount  Paran,  and  he 
came  with  ten  thousand  of  saints."  Notice  the 
sequence :  From  Sinai ;  from  Seir ;  from  Mount 
Paran.  But  it  says,  "The  Lord  came,"  and  that 
is  unthinkable.  God  does  not  come  from  one 
place  to  another.  This  must  mean  that  certain 
manifestations,  certain  messengers,  from  him 
cclne  from  those  three  places.  Now,  who  were 
txi  messengers,  those  manifestations  of  the  Lord? 


V 


236  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

From  Sinai,  it  is  plain  that  the  revelation  of  the 
Law  to  Moses  is  meant;  Sa'ir  is  a  mountain 
near  Nazareth  where  the  Gospel  was  revealed 
to  Jesus  (now  Nebi  SaSn  just  north  of  Naz- 
areth) ;  and  every  one  knows  about  the  mountain 
called  Faran  in  the  neighborhood  of  Mecca  where 
Muhammad  used  to  worship.  There  you  have 
the  three  great  revelations,  and  Muhammad's 
was  the  last. 

Again,  in  Isaiah,  21,  d-y,  it  reads,  "For  thus 
hath  the  Lord  said  unto  me,  *Go,  set  a  watchman, 
let  him  declare  what  he  seeth.  And  whenever  he 
seeth  a  troop  with  horsemen  by  pairs,  a  troop  of 
asses  and  a  troop  of  camels,  then  let  him  hearken 
diligently  with  much  heed'."  So  the  Hebrew; 
but  the  Muslims  took  it  otherwise  and  read,  "a 
rider  on  an  ass  and  a  rider  on  a  camel,"  para- 
phrasing and  condensing  the  rest  of  the  passage 
— a  possible  rendering.  But  who  was  this  rider 
upon  the  ass;  and  who  was  this  rider  upon  the 
camel?  There  can  be  no  question;  the  rider 
upon  the  ass  was  Jesus ;  the  rider  upon  the  camel 
was   Aluhammad. 

Such    were    the    prophecies    which    al-Bert^^^ 
thought  were  sound  evidence.     They  will  remi  "^ 


ISLAM    AND   THE    SCRIPTURES  23/ 

you  a  good  deal  of  our  own  old-fashioned,  literal 
Messianic  prophecies.  They  are  of  essentially  the 
same  type,  except  that  the  latter  are  a  fossilizing 
of  a  spiritual  and  historical  fact,  while  I  hardly 
think  that  any  one  will  feel  that  there  is  such  a 
reality  behind  these  Muslim  crudities  of  exegesis. 

I  will  not  take  the  time  to  give  the  other  forty 
odd  Muhammadan  prophecies  which  I  have  met. 
They  would  show  up  much  as  do  these,  which  will 
give  you  the  generally  accepted  basis  for  the 
claim  that  Muhammad  Is  foretold  In  the  Old 
Testament. 

Then,  thirdly,  there  came  the  knowledge  of 
the  Scriptures  that  was  gained  by  historians, 
using  scientific  methods.  Knowledge  of  that 
kind  came  into  Islam  within  only  a  very  limited 
period.  From  the  latter  part  of  the  eighth  to 
the  latter  part  of  the  ninth  century  was  the 
golden  time  of  Muslim  civilization.  At  that 
time  the  Muslim  world,  being  under  certain  con- 
ditions of  temporary  stimulus  and  personal  guid- 
ance, was  really  anxious  to  learn  and  to  know 
things  as  they  are.  After  that  time  the  gates 
closed,  and  they  simply  held,  in  a  confused, 
undigested   fashion,   so  much  as  they  had  got. 


238  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

During  that  time  the  historians  with  whom  we 
meet  show  a  real  desire  to  get  at  the  facts  of 
the  case  In  regard  to  the  sacred  books.  But 
they  were  always  pursued  by  the  older  stories 
that  had  come  in  through  the  proselytes — those 
strange,  fabulous  tales — and  even  the  greatest  and 
soberest  historians  felt  compelled  to  put  the  two 
things  down — the  attempt  at  fact  and  the  attempt 
at  edifying  amusement — one  beside  the  other, 
and  to  leave  it  at  that.  Perhaps  they  thought 
that  their  readers  would  know  what  to  choose 
and  that  truth  would  prevail.  Islam  has  chosen 
edifying  amusement  every  time.  The  result, 
then,  of  this  element  being  added  was  simply  to 
twice  confound  the  chaos  that  already  existed. 
But  with  the  fourth  element  there  came  a 
change.  In  the  course  of  the  eleventh  and 
twelfth  centuries  some  Muslim  theologians  began 
to  work  out  the  problem  for  themselves  and  to 
refer  for  themselves  to  the  sacred  books.  The 
greatest  of  these  was  Ibn  Hazm  who  died  in  A.  D. 
1064  (A.  H.  456).  He  was  of  what  is  called 
the  Zahirlte  school,  the  literalizing  school.  He 
believed  in  interpreting  the  Qur'an  according  to 
the  letter,   exactly  as  it  stood,  and  he  went  to 


ISLAM    AND   THE    SCRIPTURES  239 

work  at  the  Jewish  and  the  Christian  Scriptures 
and  interpreted  them  in  the  same  way.  The 
Quran  he  accepted  and  interpreted  as  the  ipsis- 
sima  verba  Dei,  but  towards  our  Scriptures  his 
attitude  was  as  nearly  as  could  be  that  of  Paine 
and  Ingersoll.  He  had  no  historical  imagination 
at  all — very  few  Muslims  have,  although  they  have 
an  indefinite  amount  of  mythologizing  fancy — 
but  he  had  very  great  analytical  ability  and  an 
especial  keenness  for  chronological  difficulties. 
Although  he  could  not  see  how  such  stories  could 
possibly  be  told  of  the  holy  patriarchs  as  were 
told  in  Genesis,  yet  he  could  see  very  well  how, 
according  to  the  chronology,  Methuselah  must 
have  died  in  the  ark  and  many  things  of  the 
like  kind.  So  in  parts  he  finds  the  Scriptures 
full  of  obscenites,  in  parts  of  ridiculous  anthro- 
pomorphisms, in  parts  of  geographical  and 
historical  impossibilities.  Some  of  the  writers — 
he  is  speaking  at  this  point  of  the  Song  of 
Solomon — did  not  seem  even  to  know  them- 
selves what  they  wanted  to  say;  the  changes  of 
gender  in  the  Song  had  puzzled  him  as  they  have 
many.  You  will  understand  how^  the  saying 
got  abroad  even  among  the  Muslims,  *'The  sword 


240  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

of  al-H'ajjaj  and  the  tongue  of  Ibn  Hazm." 
To  what  conclusion,  then,  was  he  driven  by 
this  ?  By  no  possibihty,  he  held,  could  God  have 
set  down  in  these  sacred  books — lying  and 
accursed,  he  calls  them — anything  that  could 
even  have  been  corrupted  into  such  a  form.  They 
were  clear  forgeries  from  beginning  to  end. 
But  he  was  met  by  a  difficulty.  It  is  stated 
explicitly  in  the  Qur'an  that  Muhammad  is 
''written"  in  the  books  of  the  Jews  and  the 
Christians.  And  he  knew  perfectly  well  that  the 
books  which  the  Jews  and  the  Christians  had 
possessed  in  the  time  of  Muhammad  were  still 
the  same  books  that  they  had  in  his  time.  How, 
then,  as  to  those  prophecies  of  Muhammad  of 
which  the  Qur'an  speaks  and  which  he  found 
himself  in  those  books?  Whence  were  they,  if 
the  books  were  forgeries?  He  was  driven  to  a 
rather  strange  explanation.  The  original  books 
had  been  withdrawn,  taken  back  to  heaven,  and 
these  books  w^re  of  human  composition.  But, 
by  miracle,  God  had  caused  the  prophecies  of 
Muhammad  to  survive  in  them.  Just  as  God 
could  give  power  to  a  rebellious  people  to  kill 
one  prophet  and  not  to  kill  another,  so  He  had 


ISLAM    AND   THE    SCRIPTURES  24I 

given  power  to  the  Jews  and  Christians  to  change 
part  of  their  books,  but  not  to  change  other  parts. 
This  was  his  only  way  out,  and,  with  an  unlimited 
command  of  miracle,  it  was  a  simple  solution. 

We  can  now  return  to  the  present  day  attitude, 
or  rather  attitudes,  of  Muslims  on  these  ques- 
tions. At  the  beginning  of  this  lecture  I  said 
that  you  would  find  them  varied.  You  have  now 
seen  how  varied  they  may  be.  You  will  pos- 
sibly find  some  one  who  will  be  prepared  to  take 
up  the  position  of  Muhammad  himself  and  to 
admit  that  these  are  really  the  sacred  books, 
fairly  and  fully  the  sacred  books  revealed  to 
Moses,  to  David  and  to  Jesus.  And  you  will 
find  almost  certainly  that  the  men  who  will  do 
that,  especially  if  they  are  sincere,  are  mystics. 
The  mystic  in  Islam  has  come  back  to  the  feeling 
of  the  one  spirit  lying  behind  all  literature, 
finding  expression  in  all  books ;  the  feeling  that  all 
scripture  is  given  by  inspiration.  You  will  also 
find  others  who  will  be  content  to  say,  'These  are 
the  Scriptures ;  but  we  know,  of  course,  that  they 
have  been  corrupted,"  or,  *'We  know,  of  course, 
that  there  are  serious  omissions  in  them,"  or,  "We 

know,  of  course,  that  there  have  been  additions/' 
16 


/ 


24.2  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

And  you  may  find  others,  when  the  controversy 
waxes  hot,  who  will  say,  "These  are  not  the 
books  at  all;  God  has  removed  the  sacred  books 
from  your  hands  and  these  are  the  books  of 
ungodly  men." 

With  regard  to  our  Gospels  you  will  find  that 
one  definite  and  quite  intelligible  attitude  has 
appeared.  Muslims  will  say  to  you,  *Those  four 
books  which  you  show  to  us  cannot  be  that 
Gospel,  that  Injil,  which  was  revealed  to  Jesus. 
Your  books  do  not  resemble  In  the  slightest  the 
form  of  the  Qur'an.  They  are  no  Word  of 
Allah  addressed  to  Jesus  directly,  to  be  trans- 
mitted by  him  to  mankind;  they  are  only  stories 
about  the  life  of  Jesus,  about  what  he  said  and 
did,  and  what  a  great  many  other  people  said  and 
did.  Those  four  books  which  you  show  us  and 
which  you  say  are  the  Gospel,  are,  at  the  very 
best,  only  equivalent  to  our  traditions  of  the  life 
of  the  Prophet,  the  story  of  the  sayings  and 
doings  of  Muhammad.  These  can  never  repre- 
sent the  Gospel  itself,  the  divine  Word  sent  down 
to  Jesus."  That,  you  will  find,  is  their  funda- 
mental position  on  the  Gospels,  and  they  will 
probably  be  disposed  to  go  even  farther  and  say, 


ISLAM    AND   THE    SCRIPTURES  243 

"These  are  the  equivalent,  perhaps,  of  the  tradi-. 
tions  of  Muhammad,  but  they  do  not  rest  on 
anything  hke  the  firm,  historical  basis  on  which 
our  traditions  rest." 

We  can  now  take  up  the  question  which  rises 
naturally  from  the  consideration  which  I  have 
just  put  before  you,  the  question  of  the  Muslim 
doctrine  of  the  person  of  Christ  and  of  their  gen- 
eral attitude  towards  him.  What  has  preceded 
must  evidently  produce  and  invoke  a  certain 
attitude. 

In  the  first  place,  then,  Christ  was  simply  one 
of  that  line  of  prophets  of  which  I  have  spoken; 
one  of  those  sent  to  bring  back  erring  men  to  the 
true  faith;  and  the  faith  which  he  preached,  the 
law,  usages,  ritual  which  he  laid  down  and 
observed,  must  have  been  the  same  as  that 
preached,  laid  down  and  observed  by  Muhammad 
himself. 

But,  secondly,  what  distinguishes  this  Jesus 
from  the  other  prophets — and  it  is  remarkable  how 
much  there  is  that  so  separates  him — what  gives 
him  a  different  position  from  the  others  in  that 
goodly  fellowship?  Muhammad  evidently  re- 
garded him  as  standing  quite  apart  from  all  other 


244  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

human  beings.  He  was  born  of  Mary  but  con- 
ceived without  father  directly  from  God  through 
his  messenger,  the  angel  Gabriel.  With  his  birth 
his  activity  began,  and  in  the  cradle  he  spoke 
words  of  wisdom.  The  miracles  which  he 
wrought  were  of  a  more  varied  and  wonderful 
kind  than  those  of  any  of  the  other  prophets, 
and  for  him,  especially,  was  reserved  the  miracle 
of  raising  the  dead.  This  is  the  general  con- 
sensus of  Muslim  opinion  although  some  theo- 
logians have  protested  against  it.  When  a 
Muslim  religious  writer  has  any  peculiarly  wise, 
telling,  pious  saying,  joined  to  a  story  probably, 
to  ascribe  to  a  prophet  of  the  past  generations, 
the  chances  are  that  he  will  ascribe  it  to  Jesus. 
That  seems  to  be  the  association  of  mind  with 
them.  He  was  distinguished,  also,  from  amongst 
the  other  prophets  by  purity.  In  Islam  there  is 
no  conception  that  he  ever  sinned.  I  think  that 
can  fairly  be  said.  So  at  the  Last  Day  when  he 
excuses  himself  from  attempting  to  intercede 
with  Allah,  it  is  not,  as  in  the  case  of  the  other 
prophets,  because  of  sin  on  his  part  but  because 
his  followers  have  worshipped  him.^     Therefore 

^See  al-Ghazzali's  Durra  al-fakhira  (ed.  Gauthier  187S), 


ISLAM    AND   THE    SCRIPTURES  245 

he  is  ashamed.  Later  Islam  has  striven  to  assert 
the  same  thing  of  Muhammad  but  both  Qur'an 
and  tradition  are  in  the  way.  Islam  admits  that 
Jesus  knew  no  sin. 

Further,  the  Qur'an  calls  him  the  spirit  of 
Allah — but  spirit  for  Muhammad  meant  an  angel 
— the  Word  of  Allah  and  a  Word  from  Allah. 
Such  a  half-spiritual  being  is  he,  separate  from 
mankind  in  birth,  life  and  death;  such  a  mark  has 
been  left  by  the  Gospel  story  of  his  birth,  of 
his  miracles  and  parables  and  of  his  stainless 
life. 

He  was  not  killed.  That  to  Muhammad's  mind 
was  an  impossible  thought.  He  did  not  die 
upon  the  cross.  God  first  caused  him  to  die  by 
his  own  touch;  raised  him  to  life  again;  and 
then,  living  in  the  body,  took  him  to  Heaven. 
From  thence  he  will  descend  when  the  Last  Day 
draws  nigh  and  will  rule  for  the  last  forty-five 
years  before  that  Day,  during  the  Muslim  mil- 
lennium.    But,  on  the  other  hand,  he  will  not 

pp.  50  ff.  and  63  f.  of  the  trans.  I  take  no  account  here  of 
the  late  and  quite  artificial  although  now  generally  held 
doctrine  that  all  prophets  are  guarded  by  Allah  from  sin. 
It  is  evolved  from  a  theory  and  is  in  the  teeth  of  the  teach- 
ing of  the  greatest  Muslim  theologians. 


246  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

be  the  Judge  on  the  Last  Day,  as  I  have  seen 
asserted  in  some  Western  books.  There  is  no 
Idea  of  that  kind  in  any  Arabic  writing.  To 
Allah  alone  belongs  the  rule  on  that  Day.  Nor 
is  he  even  technically  the  greatest  of  the  prophets ; 
that  rank  is  reserved  for  Muhammad.  So  much 
for  the  distinctions  which  separate  him  from  all 
other  prophets. 

As  to  the  differences  between  Christendom  and 
Islam,  you  will  remember  how  I  described  the 
doctrine  which  has  grown  up  in  Islam  that 
Muhammad  Is  the  greatest  of  all  created  beings, 
created  long  before  the  worlds;  that  for  his 
sake  the  world  was  made.  You  will  remember 
also  the  way  in  which  the  doctrine  of  the  nature 
of  the  Qur'an  was  developed;  that  there  was  a 
Word  with  God  by  which  he  made  all  things,  and 
that  of  that  Word,  the  Qur'an  as  we  have  it  is 
but  the  visible,  earthly  form.  That  being  so, 
it  is  manifestly  impossible  for  the  person  of 
Jesus  to  pass  beyond  that  of  a  semi-angelic  per- 
sonality; he  cannot  even  be  regarded  as  the  first 
of  created  beings.  The  essential  difficulty  and 
difference  for  Muhammad  lay  not  in  the  earthly, 
human  Jesus,  but  in  the  heavenly  element — the 


ISLAM    AND   THE    SCRIPTURES  247 

Spirit  from  Allah,  the  Word  of  Allah;  it  was 
a  creature,  an  'ahd,  ''a  slave,"  in  Muslim  language. 
What  were,  let  me  ask  finally  and  very  shortly, 
the  objections  for  Muhammad,  in  the  Christian 
doctrine?  One  of  them  lay,  I  think,  in  the  word, 
''begottrnx"  If  by  any  chance  it  had  been  pos- 
sible in  the  Creed  to  have  expressed  the  fact  that 
Jesus  was  not  made  but  proceeded  from  the  Father 
in  any  other  way,  by  any  other  word,  than  that, 
it  would  have  made  the  matter  indefinitely  easier 
for  Muhammad.  That  word,  that  idea,  with  all 
that  for  him  it  connoted,  he  could  not  get  over. 
And  the  idea  was  still  further  sexualized  by  the 
doctrine  of  the  Trinity  which  had  reached  him. 
It  was  one  sufficiently  outre,  for  the  Trinity,  for 
him,  consisted  of  the  Father,  the  Mother  and  the 
Son.  This  explains,  also,  how  the  Holy  Spirit 
had  become  a  simple  angel.  For  a  long  time  we 
have  been  able  only  to  guess  from  our  knowledge 
of  the  early  Christian  sects  at  what  may  have 
been  the  source  of  Muhammad's  Trinity.  But 
within  only  the  last  few  years  the  matter  has  been 
cleared  up  and  in  the  most  astonishing  fashion. 
We  have  learned  that  in  the  Syrian  Desert,  not 
very  far  over  beyond  the  Dead  Sea,  there  are 


248  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

Still  tribes  who  call  themselves  Christians  and 
who  worship  that  form  of  Trinity.  It  is  a 
remarkable  survival  of  what  must  have  been  a 
very  far  out-lying  Christian  heresy.  At  any  rate, 
we  know  now  that  Muhammad  was  not  respon- 
sible  for  it.^ 

Lastly,  he  could  not  endure  the  Christian 
acceptance  of  the  death  upon  the  cross.  That  a 
prophet  should  be  killed  by  those  to  whom  he  was 
sent  he  may  have  regarded  as  possible;  but  that 
a  prophet  should  suffer  in  such  a  way  was  an 
unthinkable  thing  for  him.  His  vehemence  on 
this  point  is  such  as  to  suggest  that  he  is  polem- 
izing on  behalf  of  the  sect  to  which  his  Christian 
teacher  belonged.  The  teacher  must  have  been 
of  one  of  the  early  sects  which  held  that  Jesus 
was  spirited  away  from  the  Jews,  and  that  another 
was  changed  into  his  likeness  and  suffered  in  his 
place.  Such,  certainly,  was  Muhammad's  posi- 
tion (Qur.  iv,  155-156),  but  the  Qur'an  makes 
no  statement  as  to  who  the  real  sufferer  was. 
The  Muslim  expansions  vary  on  the  same  point; 
evidently  there  was  no  fixed  tradition  in  Islam. 
One  story  says  that  it  was  one  of  the  leaders  of 

*Musil,  Arabia  Petraea,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  91.    • 


ISLAM    AND   THE    SCRIPTURES  249 

the  Jews;  another,  in  dramatic  justice,  that  it  was 
Pilate  himself;  another  that  it  was  one  of  the 
soldiers  sent  to  capture  Jesus;  yet  another,  and 
perhaps  the  commonest,  that  it  was  Judas.  But 
if  the  conception  of  such  self-sacrifice  was  impos- 
sible for  Muhammad,  it  was  not  absolutely 
impossible  for  the  Church  of  Muhammad  after 
him.  Let  me  close  with  a  last  story  of  this 
substitution.  I  have  read  in  an  Arabic  book  of 
the  lives  of  the  Prophets  that  Jesus  just  before 
the  end,  said  to  his  followers,  ''Whoever  has  my 
likeness  put  upon  him  will  be  slain."  Then  arose 
a  man  from  the  people  and  said,  "I,  Lord !"  And 
the  likeness  of  Jesus  was  put  upon  him,  and  he 
was  slain  and  crucified  in  his  stead.  The  later 
Muslim  Church  thus  rose  higher  in  some  of  its 
members  than  had  Muhammad  himself. 


LECTURE   VIII 

THE   MISSIONARY  ACTIVITY   OF   MUSLIMS 

We  have  now  grown  accustomed  to  hearing 
Buddhism,  Islam  and  Christianity  spoken  of  as 
the  three  missionary  religions,  it  being  meant 
thereby  that  these  three,  through  their  very 
nature,  are  impelled  to  go  out  and  by  persuasion 
and  exhortation  draw  outsiders  within  their 
respective  folds;  that  they  are  not  limited  by 
race,  country  or  caste;  but  contain  within  them- 
selves, consciously  or  unconsciously,  a  world 
destiny. 

This  classification  is  attractive  and  covers, 
undoubtedly,  a  large  element  of  truth.  But  other 
religions  have  been  missionary  in  their  time — even 
the  Jews  once  compassed  sea  and  land  to  make 
one  proselyte — and  these  three  have  not  always 
been  missionary,  and,  when  they  have,  their  con- 
verts have  never  been  affected  in  the  same  way. 
Buddhism,  to  all  appearance,  makes  the  least 
change  between  those  whom  it  takes  in  and  their 

fellows  who  stay  without ;  it  does  not  affect  either 

250 


MISSIONARY    ACTIVITY   OF    MUSLIMS  25 1 

the  national  or  the  social  feeling.  Christianity 
too  often  produces  a  pseudo-superior  caste, 
parasitically  attached  to  European  and  American 
Christendom.  Islam  always  creates  a  state 
within  a  state.  Again,  Buddhism  has  had,  appar- 
ently, long  periods  of  exhaustion  or  repose  in 
which  the  spreading  instinct  seems  to  have  died 
down.  In  the  history  of  the  Christian  Church 
one  of  the  saddest  chapters  has  been  the  apathy 
of  its  oriental  branches — once  the  Nestorian  wave 
of  conquest  was  stayed — towards  the  peoples 
lying  around  them.  As  for  Islam,  its  missionary 
ideals,  methods  and  results  form  the  subject  of 
the  present  lecture. 

We  have,  therefore,  before  us  now  what  is  a 
matter  of  history  and  what  should  be  treated  in 
historical  order.  But  that  necessary  dulness 
may,  perhaps,  be  lightened  a  little  if  we  look 
first  for  a  moment  on  the  Islam  of  the  present  day 
as  it  confronts  and  ponders  the  non-Muslim 
world.  For,  undoubtedly,  its  attitude  just  now 
is  far  more  conscious  than  it  ever  was  before. 
It  is  no  longer  developing  and  advancing  or 
slumbering  and  mouldering,  at  any  rate  follow- 
ing its  nature  in  happy  unconsciousness;  but  its 


252  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

back  is  at  the  wall,  and  it  looks  upon  an  order 
of  things,  hostile  now  not  only  militantly  but, 
what  is  far  more  deadly,  economically.  This 
situation  Islam  has  realized  and  is  realizing  more 
and  more  widely  with  every  year  that  passes.  It 
is  not  only  the  young  men  in  the  cities  who  are 
facing  a  new  future.  In  the  villages  and  even  in 
the  recesses  of  the  desert  itself  the  consciousness 
is  awakening  that  all  is  not  well  with  the  People 
of  Muhammad.  They  all  know  how  Arabi  Pasha 
was  crushed  at  Tell  el-Kebir,  how  the  Fulani 
Emirates  went  down  and  how,  in  these  last  days, 
the  Mahdi  and  his  rule  have  been  swept  from  the 
Sudan.  It  has  gone  ill  with  militant  Islam,  and 
when  Islam  is  not  militant,  it  dreams  away  its 
life  in  slow  decay.  The  pressure,  too,  and  the 
drive  of  the  modern  world  have  at  last  come 
home  to  them.  They  are  learning  that  Europe 
will  use  and  exhaust  them  to  the  last  drop  of 
blood  if  they  do  not  learn  to  use  themselves.  On 
Asia  the  great  European  fear  now  lies  more 
blackly  than  ever  since  the  time  of  Alexander 
and  his  successors.  And  always  before  when 
Islam  yielded  ground — in  Spain,  in  Sicily,  in 
Hungary,  in  the  Balkans — it  was  conquered  terri- 


MISSIONARY    ACTIVITY    OF    MUSLIMS  253 

tory,  and  no  native  soil  that  it  gave  up.  Or,  if 
it  yielded,  it  took  it  again,  as  the  Latin  kingdom 
of  Jerusalem  rose  and  fell.  But  now  the  war 
of  manufacture  and  commerce,  with  their  swift, 
stern  blows  of  economic  necessity,  has  struck  to 
the  very  center  of  the  Faith,  and  many  Muslims 
see  that,  if  they  would  save  themselves,  an  educa- 
tion and  training  alien  and  antagonistic  to  Islam 
must  be  whole-heartedly  accepted  and  used. 
Thus  the  Muslim  peoples  are  slowly  and  uneasily 
becoming  aware  that  the  Faith  which  was  their 
pride  and  strength — nay,  the  very  essence  of  their 
being — is  their  handicap,  and  they  do  not  yet  see 
how  to  transform  it.  Militant  and  dominant 
Islam  is  gone.     Can  Islam  be  anything  else? 

It  may  be  said  roughly,  but  with  fair  adequacy, 
that  Muslims  are  facing  this  crisis  in  three  dif- 
ferent ways.  First,  there  is  a  tendency  to  flee 
in  despair  before  the  advance  of  Christendom 
and  to  take  refuge  in  deserts  supposedly  inacces- 
sible, or  at  least  unattractive,  to  the  men  of  the 
new  order  of  things.  As  mountains  have  ever 
been  the  last  abodes  of  liberty,  so  for  Islam  the 
recesses  of  the  desert.  Thus  the  Senusites  have 
gradually  withdrawn  deeper  and  deeper  into  the 


254  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

Sahara  and  seem  anxious  only  to  avoid  all  con- 
tact with  the  non-Muslim  world. 

But,  secondly,  there  are  many  who  have  adopted 
no  such  counsel  of  despair,  who  have  faith  in 
the  future  of  Islam  and  who  remain  face  to 
face  with  the  enemy  and  still  keep  up  the  long 
fight.  These  militant  spirits  will  have  nothing 
to  do  with  the  new  civilization,  but  also  will  not 
fly  before  It.  If  active  warfare  were  possible, 
they  would  embrace  it  and  die  in  the  last  ditch. 
As  it  is,  they  are  praisers  of  the  times  past ;  they 
study  the  old  books  and  write  new  ones  of  the 
old  kind.  Of  them,  largely,  are  the  'Ulama  of 
Egypt.  Many  of  them  were  in  sympathy  with  the 
Mahdi  of  the  Sudan ;  many  still  are  in  communi- 
cation with  the  Senusite  chiefs;  they  have  for  a 
time  succeeded  in  preserving  the  medieval  char- 
acter of  the  Azhar  University.  Round  them,  if 
the  chance  were  but  to  come,  the  masses  of  the 
Muslim  population  would  rally,  and  among  them 
a  section  of  the  Egyptian  Nationalist  party  is  to 
be  found. 

The  rest  of  the  Nationalists  fall  into  the  third 
division,  which  consists  of  those  Muslims  who 
are   prepared    to    assimilate   the   civilization    of 


MISSIONARY    ACTIVITY    OF    MUSLIMS  255 

Christendom,  prepared  to  make  the  attempt,  at 
least,  to  bring  the  MusHm  peoples  within  the 
circle  of  modern  life.  But  it  is  plain  that  in 
this  division  there  must  be  two  elements.  One 
element  is  ready  to  go  to  all  lengths  to  modern- 
ize Islam.  For  it  the  modernizing  is  the  point; 
not  any  retaining  of  Islam.  Many  of  those  who 
think  in  this  w^ay  must  recognize  that  the  modern 
world  and  Islam  are  incompatible.  Among 
these,  plainly,  is  the  Young  Turk  Committee. 
They  are  going  steadily  forward  with  their  trans- 
formation of  the  Turkish  Empire  and  in  so  doing 
are  respecting  Muslim  ideas  as  far  as  possible, 
even  making  some  attempt  at  showing  that  the 
good  Muslim  should  be  a  constitutionalist  and 
should  regard  his  Christian  fellow  subject  as  on 
the  same  level  with  himself.  But  when  Islam 
stands  in  the  way  of  the  Young  Turk  program, 
it  is  Islam  that  must  yield.  Sharply  contrasted 
with  this  element  is  another,  best  illustrated  by 
the  Egyptian  Nationalists.  It,  too.  Is  progres- 
sive; but  always  with  the  proviso  that  Islam  be 
preserved.  It  will  have  nothing  to  do  with  a 
progress  in  which  any  of  the  essence  of  Islam 
evaporates.      Many,    doubtless,    of    this    party 


256  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

believe  that  this  program  is  possible.  But  as  the 
situation  works  itself  out,  there  cannot  be  much 
question  that  they  will  be  driven  either  into 
the  party  of  militant  conservatism  or  into  the 
party  whose  will  is  to  modernize,  let  come  to 
Islam  what  may.  And  the  division  will  fall 
according  to  their  attitude  towards  their  non- 
Muslim   fellow   citizens. 

But  you  may  perhaps  ask,  What  has  this  to 
do  with  missions?  It  has  everything  to  do  with 
missions,  if  you  look  at  missions  broadly  enough. 
What,  humanly,  are  missions  but  an  attempt  to 
assimilate  the  ideas  and  ideals  of  all  the  peoples 
of  the  earth  to  those  of  the  missionary,  to  unify 
the  earth?  And  this  great  unifying  is  going 
on,  swiftly  and  steadily.  The  only  question  is 
round  what  ideal  it  shall  center.  For  us,  can  we 
make  it  the  Christian  faith;  for  Muslims  can 
they  save  Islam  in  the  great  levelling.  Or  are 
the  wheels  of  progress  to  crush  out  all  ideals, 
and  is  the  future  civilization  of  the  world  to  be 
woven  of  philosophic  doubt,  of  common-sense 
attitudes  and  of  material  luxury?  There  is  a 
curious  side-development  of  Islam  which  looks 
in  that  direction,  and  which  sees  in  the  narrowed, 


MISSIONARY    ACTIVITY   OF    MUSLIMS  25/ 

utilitarian  aims,  in  the  acceptance  of  the  lower 
facts  of  life,  in  the  easy  ideals  which  characterize 
that  religion,  the  promise  that  its  will  be  the 
future  in  the  common-sense  world  to  come,  and 
holds  that,  even  as  the  world  is,  Islam  must  be 
the  religion  of  all  sensible  men. 

Here,  as  you  see,  I  am  dealing  with  ideas,  for 
ideas  in  the  end  rule.  Islam  may  be  adding  its 
millions  in  India  and  Africa ;  but  these  will  weigh 
little  in  the  process  of  the  centuries.  Where, 
rather,  are  the  germinant  ideas,  where  the  plans 
of  life  and  thought  which  hold  the  future?  No 
one,  looking  at  essential  Islam,  can  believe  that 
they  are  there.  The  great  curves  of  progress 
touch  but  seldom  its  surfaces. 

But  let  me  turn  from  Islam  facing  that  puzzling 
future,  and  look  at  it  in  the  light  of  history,  as 
it  spread,  conquered,  absorbed.  For  the  missions 
of  Islam  were  all  the  means  by  which  outside 
peoples  and  individuals  were  brought  into  its 
fold. 

Again  we  must  begin  with  Muhammad  and 

ask  the  question,  In  what  sense,  in  what  ways, 

was  he  a  missionary?     We  have  seen  how  far 

he  could  be  called  a  prophet,  and  what  was  his 

17 


258  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

kinship  with  the  different  types  of  prophets  which 
were  found  among  the  Hebrews.  And  it  was 
in  virtue  of  his  prophetship,  or  his  claim  to 
prophetship,  that  he  was  a  missionary,  and  his 
characteristics  as  a  missionary  were  determined 
by  his  character  as  a  prophet.  He  came  forward 
as  a  Messenger  of  Allah  to  men,  as  the  Represen- 
tative of  Allah  with  men.  It  was  not  the  con- 
tent of  his  teaching  that  was  the  principal  thing; 
it  was  the  fact  that  he  was  there  to  teach.  From 
this  point  of  view  his  position  was:  Accept  me 
and  obey  me ;  not,  Hear  the  word  of  Allah  which 
he  has  spoken  to  me.  The  result  of  his  mission 
was  to  provide  an  autocratic  chief,  acting  as 
representative  of  Allah  in  a  theocratic  state. 

This,  you  will  observe,  is  a  personality  and  a 
method  very  different  from  those  of  the  Hebrew 
prophets,  denouncing  wickedness,  exhorting  to 
righteousness  and  teaching  the  true  nature  and 
will  of  Jehovah ;  but  remaining  themselves  scrupu- 
lously in  the  background  and  leaving  to  the 
proper  authorities  the  carrying  out  of  that  will. 
And  here,  exactly,  the  door  was  opened  wide 
to  personal  ambition  and  aggrandizement.  The 
Hebrew  prophets  had  kept  apart  the  prophetic 


MISSIONARY   ACTIVITY   OF    MUSLIMS  259 

and  the  executive  offices;  it  had  not  been  for 
the  advantage  of  reHgion  in  Israel  when  by  any- 
chance  they  had  joined.  But  Muhammad  was 
a  religious  politician,  and  grasped  eage^rly  at 
secular  power  to  enforce  and  carry  out  his  theo- 
logical ideas.  There  have  been  many  of  his  kind 
since,  and  they  have  not  helped  either  religion 
or  government. 

This  was  the  side  of  Muhammad's  claim  which 
led  to  his  first  rejection  by  the  Meccans  and  to 
their  long  war  against  him  In  his  little  state  at 
Medina.  They  saw  very  clearly  that  his  success 
would  make  him  a  king  over  them  and  destroy 
their  genuinely  Arab  aristocratic  rule.  They 
thought  also  that  it  would  lead  to  the  doing 
away  of  the  worship  and  ritual  of  the  Ka'ba  at 
Mecca  and  to  the  wealth  which  they  drew  there- 
from. The  latter  result  should  logically  have 
followed,  only  in  Muhammad's  later  life  the 
politician  overcame  the  theologian,  and  he  had 
the  skill  to  attach  to  his  iconoclastic  puritanism 
almost  the  whole  ritual  of  Mecca. 

But  his  headship  of  both  church  and  state  stood 
fast.  He  could  say  most  absolutely,  Uetat  c'esf 
moi,  and  it    is  due  to  him  that  church  and  state 


260  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

ill  Islam  are  still  one  and  the  same,  indivisible. 
Yet,  from  this  political  cleverness,  it  would  not,  I 
think,  be  fair  to  conclude  that  he  was  with  definite 
consciousness  setting  aside  his  ideals  and  follow- 
ing his  ambitions.  He  had  an  entire  belief  in 
himself,  and  his  ideals  centered  round  himself. 
How  the  streams  of  deception  and  self-deception 
crossed  and  tangled  in  his  brain  we  cannot 
determine.  The  fixed  and  certain  thing  is  that 
his  prophetship  had  such  affinities,  and  that  his 
preaching  was  a  proclaiming  of  himself. 

So  he  fulfilled  what  he  regarded  as  his  mission 
to  the  Arabs.  The  content  of  his  preaching  I  have 
already  put  before  you.  Here  our  interest  Is 
the  relationship  of  that  preaching  to  the  preacher. 
With  this  resolves  itself,  too,  the  whole  question 
of  force  in  Islam,  of  Muhammad's  use  of  the 
sword,  as  it  is  commonly  put,  and  of  how  he 
gained  the  sword  which  he  used.  At  first  he 
could  use  no  sword  as  he  had  none ;  he  could  only 
preach  himself  as  prophet  and  messenger  of  Allah 
to  the  Arabs.  But  the  consciousness  of  Arab 
national  unity  swelled  and  rose  In  his  day.  He 
headed  it,  moulded  it,  directed  it,  and  the  sword 
was   in   his  hand. 


MISSIONARY    ACTIVITY   OF    MUSLIMS  261 

This  is  significantly  shown  by  the  rapid  growth 
of  his  adherents  and  by  the  ways  in  which  they 
joined  themselves  to  him  after  his  open  appear- 
ance as  a  political  leader  and  ruler  at  Medina. 
Many,  doubtless,  came  as  before,  attracted  as 
individuals,  by  the  Faith  which  he  preached  and 
by  his  personality;  but  it  was  not  long  before 
the  tribes  came  in  to  him  as  tribes,  recognizing 
that  in  so  doing  they  were  joining  the  great 
Arab  confederacy  and  becoming  part  of  the  Arab 
nation  which  was  in  the  throes  of  birth.  It  is 
true  that  they  had  been  Arabs  before,  but  before 
that,  again,  they  had  been  tribesmen  of  their 
several  tribes,  at  most,  parts  of  an  ever-shifting 
conglomerate  of  groups  split  and  rent  by  inter- 
tribal feud  and  conflict.  Now  they  were  begin- 
ning, under  the  hammering  of  Byzantium  and 
Persia,  to  feel  themselves  Arabs  against  the 
world,  and  it  was  only  by  the  genius  of  Muham- 
mad who  furnished  them  with  a  crystallizing 
point  that  they  passed  from  that  to  being  Mus- 
lims against  the  world.  Without  Muhammad 
this  national  movement  would  probably  have 
amounted  to  little ;  the  rope  of  desert  sand  would 
quickly  have  again  fallen  apart.     Even  with  him 


262  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

and  his  influence  Arabia  as  a  nation  did  not 
long  exist.  At  his  death  the  tribes  scattered  to 
their  tents;  were  won  back  with  mighty  efforts 
by  his  immediate  successors;  were  for  a  short 
time  the  conquering  sword  wielded  by  Islam — 
that  new  thing,  half  faith,  half  nation,  which 
had  arisen  and  which  was  directed  from  Medina, 
the  seat  of  a  half  monkish  empire — and  then 
finally  broke  asunder,  to  be  a  nation  never  again. 
And  as  thus  in  its  infant  days  with  the  Arabs, 
so  later,  Islam  knew  how  to  form  and  use  the 
Turks  as  a  sword,  to  form  and  use  the  Sudanese 
as  a  sword.  Islam  remained ;  the  peoples  which 
it  flung  on  the  world  changed  and  passed.  But 
what  is  Islam?  As  well  ask  what  Christen- 
dom is.  It  is  an  idea;  first  in  the  brain  of 
Muhammad;  passed  on  to  his  Church;  existent 
and  fostered  there;  having  for  a  time  its  being 
in  that  little  group  of  theologian-statesmen  who 
immediately  succeeded  Muhammad  at  Medina; 
thereafter  diffused  in  the  body  of  believers. 

But  to  return.  This  new,  short-lived  Arab 
nation  was  Muhammad's  personal  weapon.  He 
called  himself  emphatically  and  peculiarly  the 
prophet  of  the  Arabs.     The  former  prophets  had 


MISSIONARY    ACTIVITY    OF    MUSLIMS  263 

been  sent,  each  to  a  people  as  their  own.  Now 
the  turn  of  the  Arabs  was  at  last  come,  and 
he  was  with  them.  And  remember  that  for  him 
the  prophetic  ideal  was  Moses  and  not  Amos  or 
Hosea.  It  was  his  to  tell  them  the  will  of  Allah ; 
but  it  was  his  also  to  use  them  against  the 
unbelieving  world  as  the  sword  of  Allah.  He 
was  a  prophet,  not  only  inward,  to  his  own  people, 
but  outward  also,  from  his  own  people  to  the 
world.  And  so  we  find  him  in  the  seventh  year 
after  his  migration  to  Medina  sending  letters 
to  all  the  kings  and  governors  of  whom  he  had 
knowledge — to  Byzantium,  to  Persia,  to  Egypt, 
to  Abyssinia — calling  upon  them  to  submit  them- 
selves and  to  accept  the  prophet  whom  Allah 
had  sent.  With  these  letters  Arabia  and  its 
prophet  claimed  as  a  right  the  obedience  of  the 
world,  and  their  rejection  was  an  ample  basis 
for  war.  The  prophet  had  appeared,  had  made 
his  public  claim,  had  been  rejected;  upon  the 
rejectors  lay  their  own  blood.  Arabia  was  ready 
to  overflow  its  bounds;  it  was  to  do  so  as  the 
sword  of  Islam. 

In   the   last   years    much   ink    has    been   spilt 
discussing  the  question  whether  or  not  the  Qur'an 


264  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

justifies  unprovoked  war  by  a  Muslim  state  upon 
a  state  which  is  not  MusHm.  The  question  is 
purely  academic,  and  I  do  not  desire  to  enter  upon 
it  here.  For  Muhammad  it  did  not  exist,  and 
nothing  bearing  upon  it  appears  in  the  Qur'an. 
It  arose  later  when  Muslim  states  found  them- 
selves compelled  by  situations  of  fact  to  live  on 
terms  of  treaty,  or  at  least  understanding,  with 
states  which  were  not  Muslim.  Of  such  a  con- 
tingency Muhammad  never  dreamt.  He  was 
there  as  the  prophet  of  Allah.  A  part  of  the  world 
had,  so  far,  accepted  him;  a  part  had  not  yet. 
It  was  his  right  to  demand  the  obedience  of  all 
and  to  proceed  against  them  if  they  rejected  him. 
At  the  time  of  his  death  he  was  so  proceeding. 
That  is  the  historic  fact,  and  that  was  his  way 
of  acting  as  a  missionary. 

But  with  the  death  of  Muhammad  in  the  year 
eleven  of  the  Hijra  a  change  entered  into  this, 
as  into  all  the  aspects  of  Muslim  development. 
The  prophet  was  no  longer  there  to  guide  the 
enforcement  of  his  own  claims  and  to  dictate 
the  treatment  of  those  who  obstinately  opposed 
the  truth,  whether  as  individuals  or  as  states. 
So  his  successors  had  to  develop  a  theory  on  the 


MISSIONARY    ACTIVITY    OF    MUSLIMS  265 

subject  and  to  work  out,  in  practice,  a  set  of 
regulations.  And  first,  and  for  long,  it  was  the 
relation  to  individual  non-Muslims  which  had  to 
be  regulated.  The  great  automatic  wave  of  con- 
quest— in  part,  as  we  have  seen,  the  half-conscious 
overflow  of  the  surplus  population  of  Arabia  and 
in  part  the  avenging  advance  of  the  armies  of 
Allah  and  his  prophet — had  to  go  on  until  the 
world  was  subdued  to  the  new  faith.  There  was, 
therefore,  a  state  of  war  with  all  non-Muslim 
countries.  But  within  the  conquered  countries 
individual  non-Muslims  were  bound  to  be  left, 
and  that,  too,  in  great  numbers.  To  a  state  the 
alternative  offered  at  that  time  was  of  the  Qur'an 
or  the  sword — join  the  Muslim  confederacy  or 
fight.  But  to  an  individual  the  alternative  was 
the  Qur'an  or  tribute — become  a  Muslim  citizen 
or,  by  payment  of  certain  taxes,  become  a  pro- 
tected resident  non-citizen.  Those  who  thus 
saved  their  religion  and  their  lives  had  no  rights 
per  se  as  citizens ;  they  had  only  a  certain  protec- 
tion guaranteed  to  them  by  treaty ;  their  property 
and  lives  were  assured  on  the  payment  of  certain 
taxes.  But  the  names  given  to  these  taxes  were 
sufficiently  suggestive  of  their  status.     There  was 


266  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

a  poll-tax  called  jizya,  which  means  "ransom," 
and  a  property  tax  called  kharaj,  which  meant 
the  revenue  which  a  master  drew  from  the  labour 
of  a  slave.  The  non-Muslims  thus  ransomed 
their  lives  and  paid  to  the  Muslim  treasury,  as 
slaves  did  to  their  masters,  a  certain  proportion 
of  their  property  and  labour. 

This  system  was  a  very  simple  development 
from  the  situation  as  I  have  already  sketched 
it.  The  Arab  Muslims  were  limited  in  numbers 
and  so  had  to  be  retained  as  an  army  to  fight  in 
the  Path  of  Allah.  They  must  not  be  allowed 
to  acquire  estates  and  to  settle  in  the  conquered 
lands.  The  original  inhabitants,  therefore,  had 
to  retain  their  landed  property,  but  under  con- 
dition of  paying  large  taxes  to  the  state,  which, 
in  its  turn,  supported  the  Muslim  army.  That 
army,  when  outside  of  Arabia,  was  thus  to  be 
a  military,  non-landed,  non-productive  caste  sup- 
ported by  the  non-Muslim  population.  Within 
Arabia  no  non-Muslim  might  live.  It  was  the 
country  of  the  people  whom  Allah  had  honoured 
by  sending  from  their  midst  the  latest  and  great- 
est of  the  prophets.  Further,  when  a  non-Muslim 
embraced  Islam,  he  no  longer  paid  the  poll-tax. 


MISSIONARY    ACTIVITY    OF    MUSLIMS  2()y 

his  land  was  taken  and  distributed  among  his 
former  fellows,  who  had  to  cultivate  it  and  pay 
the  tax  on  it,  and  he  himself,  as  a  member  now 
of  the  dominant  caste,  was  supported  from  the 
Muslim  treasury.  It  is  significant  for  the  weight 
of  the  land-tax,  that  so  many  abandoned  their 
property  and  embraced  Islam  as  to  lead,  in  time, 
to  the  breakdown  of  this  system.  What  survived 
of  it  was  that  only  Muslims  could  be  citizens 
and  have  full  civil  rights,  while  non-Muslims, 
not  being  citizens,  were  under  a  certain  protection 
for  which  they  were  taxed  in  different  ways. 
The  various  non-Muslim  ecclesiastical  organi- 
zations were  also,  because  of  this  fact  of  non-citi- 
zenship, given  autonomy  among  themselves,  and 
jurisdiction  over  their  own  people.  The  head  of 
each  such  organization — Patriarch,  Bishop,  Chief 
Rabbi,  etc.,  was  the  means  of  communication 
between  the  community  and  the  Muslim  state. 
There  gradually  grew  up,  also,  a  variety  of 
ordinances  limiting  the  liberty  of  action  of  non- 
Muslims  as  to  public  appearance  and  action,  dress, 
worship,  ecclesiastical  buildings,  etc.  Similar 
regulations  held  throughout  medieval  Europe 
with  regard  to  Jews,   and  the  present    (1910) 


\ 


268  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

conflict  between  the  Spanish  government  and  the 
Vatican  is  over  a  Hke  denial  of  the  right  to  public 
exercise  of  religion.  In  Islam  the  rigour  with 
which  these  ordinances  were  enforced  varied 
greatly  from  time  to  time.  No  Muslim  govern- 
ment has  ever  long  been  able  to  carry  on  its 
affairs  without  the  assistance  of  Christian  or 
Jewish  officials,  and  these  have  sometimes  risen  to 
the  highest  positions  under  the  state.  Naturally, 
then,  oppressive  regulations  upon  their  fellow 
believers  would  not  be  enforced.  These  would 
show  themselves  prominently  In  public,  exhibit 
wealth  and  pride,  and  arouse  the  wrath  of  the 
Muslim  mob.  Then  there  would  be  riots,  perse- 
cutions, bloodshed  and  wholesale  conversions  to 
Islam,  or  sharp  suppression  by  the  government, 
according  to  the  strength  of  the  government  of 
the  time.  Thus  ruled  at  one  time  by  the  need 
of  Christians  to  carry  on  the  government  and  at 
another  time  by  the  jealousy  of  the  mob,  the  regu- 
lations used  to  swing  to  and  fro  between  sharp 
enforcement  and  harmless  desuetude. 

But  with  all  this  friction  and  while  the  formal 
situation  between  Muslims  and  non-Muslims 
stood  thus,  it  must  not  be  supposed  that  there 


MISSIONARY   ACTIVITY    OF    MUSLIMS  269 

were  no  missionary  efforts  in  the  exact  sense  to 
spread  the  faith  of  Islam.  It  is  true  that,  Hke 
medieval  Europe,  Islam  has  never  had  mission- 
aries who  were  missionaries  only.  But  it  is 
probably  true  also  that  the  masses  of  Islam  have 
more  generally,  both  geographically  and  as  to 
periods  of  time,  been  incHned  towards  missionary 
work,  towards  the  spread  of  their  faith  by  one 
means  or  another.  This  goes  with  the  other 
probable  fact  that  religion,  of  one  kind  or  another, 
and  the  zeal  for  religion,  manifested  in  one  way 
or  another,  have  always,  or  generally,  bulked 
more  largely  as  elements  in  the  life  of  the  Muslim 
peoples  than  in  that  in  Christendom.  Of  course, 
there  have  been  dead  periods  in  Islam  when  the 
feeling  ruled  that  the  matter  was  in  the  hands  of 
Allah  and  should  be  left  to  him,  and  there  have 
been  dead  districts  where  the  intellectual  energy 
of  a  whole  country  died  down  for  a  time.  In 
Christendom,  too,  there  have  been  periods  and 
centres  of  fervent  religious  activity  when  religion 
was  accepted  by  practically  the  mass  of  the  people 
as  the  one  thing  worth  while  in  life.  But, 
broadly,  the  situation  holds,  I  think,  as  I  have 
stated  it,  and  the  impulse  in  Islam  to  spread  and 


2/0  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

propagate  itself  has  manifested  itself  through 
direct  movements  of  the  people  and  not  through 
the  efforts  of  a  class  especially  set  apart  thereto. 
Naturally  we  find  this  outstandingly  on  the 
part  of  theologians  and  men  professionally  in 
religion.  Wandering  saints,  ascetics  and  dar- 
wishes  would  probably  come  nearest  to  our 
professional  missionaries.  But  even  with  them 
it  was  not  the  object  of  their  lives  but  simply 
a  by-product  of  their  religious  energy.  In  Mus- 
lim religious  biography  we  meet  again  and  again 
with  stories  of  how  fervent  a  preacher  of  Islam 
the  subject  of  the  biography  had  been  and  of 
how  thousands  had  been  converted  by  him,  of 
Christians  or  Jews,  as  the  case  might  be.  These 
tales  are  sometimes  rather  suggestive  of  mob- 
violence,  as  when  we  read  that  ten  to  twenty 
thousand  were  converted  on  the  occasion  of  the 
funeral  of  Ahmad  ibn  Hanbal,  a  great  canonist 
who  died  in  A.  H.  241  (A.  D.  855),  or  when 
we  find  that  such  conversions  en  masse  followed 
the  fall  by  violence  of  some  Christian  or  Jewish 
vizier.  But  besides  these,  we  find  in  Islam 
merchants,  tradesmen,  travellers,  all  sorts  and 
conditions,    taking    a    hand — direct    and    some- 


MISSIONARY   ACTIVITY   OF    MUSLIMS  2^1 

times  heavy — in  the  spread  of  their  faith. 
Of  controversy,  too,  there  are  many  traces 
and  remains.  I  have  already  referred  to  the 
influence  on  Muslim  theology  exercised  by  John 
of  Damascus,  the  great  Father  of  the  Greek 
Church.  That  influence  was  probably,  to  a  con- 
siderable extent,  through  controversy,  as  we  find 
one  of  his  tractates  arranged  as  a  manual  for  that 
purpose.  It  falls  into  sections  beginning,  "When 
the  Saracen  says  such  and  such  to  you,  you  must 
answer  so  and  so."  Evidently  at  that  time 
Muslims  entered  into  argument  with  Christians. 
Again,  at  the  court  of  al-Ma'mun,  the  *Abbasid 
Khalifa  who  died  in  A.  H.  218  (A.  D.  833), 
and  who  was  a  rationalistic  Muslim  believing 
firmly  in  himself  and  in  his  own  pontifical 
right  to  rule  the  Faith,  there  took  place  a  very 
interesting  written  controversy  between  two 
of  his  courtiers,  one,  who  was  of  the  family 
of  the  Prophet,  and  another,  al-Klndi  by  name, 
who  was  a  learned  Christian.  The  invita- 
tion by  the  former  to  embrace  Islam  directed  to 
al-Kindi  may  not  have  come  down  to  us  complete, 
as  the  book,  having  been  early  put  under  Muslim 
ban,  has  reached  us  only  in  Christian  copies;  but 


272  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

that  of  al-Kindi  is  certainly  complete  and  is  a 
very  remarkable  document,  especially  significant 
for  the  freedom  of  utterance  permitted  by 
al-Ma'mun.  After  his  time  no  Christian  could 
express  himself  so  bitingly  in  public,  and  it  is 
probable  that  al-Ma'mun,  for  himself,  had  an 
indifferent  attitude  towards  all  religions,  though 
as  head  of  Islam  he  meant  to  see  to  it  that  those 
of  his  subjects  who  were  Muslims  should  hold  a 
faith  adapted  more  or  less  to  his  own  ideas. 

But  when  we  look  broadly  at  the  attitude  of 
Muslims  in  general  towards  Christians  in  general, 
we  are  confronted  by  at  least  three  questions. 
What,  we  must  ask,  did  Muslims  know  about 
Christians  ?  What  amount  of  knowledge  of  Chris- 
tendom outside  and  of  the  Christians  amongst 
them  had  really  reached  them?  Second,  what 
did  they  think  about  them?  How  did  they 
represent  to  themselves  those  unknown  external 
powers  and  those  strange  semi-foreign  person- 
alities in  their  midst?  And,  third,  how  did  they 
feel  towards  them?  What  were  their  attitudes 
and  the  impulses  working  upon  them  in  those 
relationships?  Again,  we  might  classify  our 
problems    in    another   way,    and    ask    what   the 


MISSIONARY   ACTIVITY    OF    MUSLIMS  273 

knowledge,  Ideas,  attitudes  of  Muslim  rulers,  of 
the  Muslim  state,  qua  state,  were;  what  those  of 
Muslim  theologians  and  learned  men  generally, 
and  what  those  of  the  Muslim  masses.  It  is 
plain  that  the  question  which  here  confronts  us 
is  very  complex  and  has  many  sides.  All  that 
I  can  do  now  is  to  illumine  some  of  these  in 
order  that  the  great  tangle  may  become  more 
vivid  and  real,  and  that  some  of  its  essential 
aspects  may  be  brought  out. 

The  knowledge,  ideas  and  attitudes  of  the  theo- 
logians have  already  been  made  tolerably  plain  in 
the  last  lecture.  To  the  picture  of  confusion 
and  ignorance  which  is  there  given,  I  will  add 
only  one  detail  which  goes  far  to  explain  the 
whole.  The  Muslim  is  warned  in  a  tradition 
from  the  Prophet,  which  all,  I  believe,  accept  as 
genuine,  not  to  be  on  terms  of  intimate  friendship 
with  any  unbeliever.  This  has  been  received 
by  religious  Muslims  as  meaning  that,  while 
non-Muslims  are  to  be  treated  with  courtesy, 
intercourse,  even,  with  them  should  not  be 
cultivated,  friendship  with  them  cannot  exist. 
Ash-Sha*ranT,  a  Cairene  mystic  of  the  sixteenth 
century  and,  otherwise,  a  very  keen,  pure  and 
18 


274  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

broad-minded  man,  in  one  of  his  booKS  in  which 
he  recites  the  duties  which  the  Prophet  has  laid 
upon  all  believers,  reckons  the  observance  of  this 
tradition  among  them.  In  present  day  Egypt, 
also,  I  have  known  it  cited  in  warning  by  one 
Muslim  to  another.  The  remembrance  of  the 
existence  of  this  tradition  used  to  follow  me  in 
my  relations  with  Muslims  in  the  East  and 
affected,  to  an  extent  which  was  perhaps  unwar- 
ranted, my  sense  of  the  reality  of  the  intimacies 
which  I  seemed  to  have  gained.  But  you  will 
easily  see  how  impossible,  with  such  a  point  of 
departure,  all  real  sympathy  and  understanding 
must  be.  The  man  who  is  occupied,  in  any  way, 
in  holding  others  at  arm's  length,  can  gain 
no  real  knowledge  of  them.  Nor  can  the  man 
who  always  looks  down  on  others  from  a  height 
of  superiority,  as  do  the  theologians  of  Islam 
and  indeed  all  Muslims.  On  both  these  points  It 
is  for  our  missionaries  to   take  admonition. 

The  attitude  of  the  Muslim  state  as  a  state 
must  also  be  tolerably  clear.  On  one  side  it 
inherited  the  tradition  that  Islam  was  a  conquer- 
ing force,  the  object  of  which  was  to  subdue  the 
world  to  the  true  faith  of  Allah;  only  when  that 


MISSIONARY   ACTIVITY    OF    MUSLIMS  275 

was  accomplished  could  there  be  peace.  Signifi- 
cantly, in  this  connection,  canon  law  divides  the 
v^hole  v^orld  into  tv^o,  Dar  al-Islam,  "Abode  of 
Islam,"  and  Dar  al  harb,  "Abode  of  War"— 
where  Islam  was  not  there  was  war.  And  this 
attitude  of  mind,  it  must  always  be  remembered, 
belongs  permanently  to  a  MusHm  state;  it  is 
fundamental  to  Islam.  But  on  another  side, 
Muslim  states,  ever  since  the  first  century  or  two 
of  free,  unthinking  conquest,  have  been  com- 
pelled to  live  on  some  terms  or  other  with 
Christian  states.  And  they  could  not  very  well 
say  to  these  Christian  states,  "We  are,  you  must 
understand,  strictly  at  war  with  one  another;  we 
are  deadly  enemies  and  must  be  until  we  have 
utterly  subdued  you ;  we  do  not  recognize  you  in 
any  way  as  independent  states  and  princes;  you 
are  simply  rebels  to  Allah  and  to  us;  but  on 
account  of  trade  and  the  peaceful  side  of  life 
generally,  we  are  compelled  to  have  understand- 
ings if  not  treaties  with  one  another.  Therefore 
we . . ."  Yet  that  is  really  what  diplomacy  down 
to  the  eighteenth  century  between  Muslims  and 
Christians  meant;  what  it  means  to  this  day 
for  very  many  Muslims.     Here  is  an  example  of 


276  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

a  detail.  When  the  rulers  of  Morocco  in  the 
eighteenth  century  had  of  necessity  to  enter  into 
intercourse  by  letter  with  the  French  government, 
they  dropped  the  use  of  all  titles  for  themselves 
to  avoid  having  to  give  titles  to  the  French  king. 
It  v^as  simply  Muhammad  ibn  Abdallah  to  Louis 
XVI.  This  was  after  an  attempt  to  soothe  their 
conscience  by  giving  as  a  title  instead  of  malik 
or  sultan,  the  word  tdghiya  which  means  a 
"usurper"  or  the  ''head  of  a  rebellious  sect."  ^ 

More  recently  other  subterfuges  have  been  dis- 
covered. The  canon  lawyers,  urged  by  necessity, 
have  ruled  that  a  country  in  which  the  peculiar 
usages  of  Islam  are  protected  and  its  injunctions, 
even  in  part,  followed,  must  be  reckoned  as  an 
Abode  of  Islam.  This  covers  all  Europe  except, 
perhaps,  Spain ;  there  the  ashes  are  still  hot.  But 
this,  at  least  for  the  masses  of  the  people,  is 
strictly  a  temporary  subterfuge.  Lift  the  neces- 
sity— as  at  present  in  the  Central  Arabian  states — 
and  the  old  claim  would  reappear ;  that  is,  except 
for  those  who  were  farsighted  enough  to  see  its 
permanent  impossibility. 

And  the  same  change  has  come  to  the  Muslim 

^De  Sacy,  Chrestomathie  arabe,  III,  pp.  332  ff. 


MISSIONARY   ACTIVITY    OF    MUSLIMS  277 

States    in   their  attitude   towards   the   Christians 
within  their  borders.     From  being  a  class  toler- 
ated and  protected  in  a  fashion,  because  it  was 
impossible  to  convert  them  all  or  kill  them  all, 
Christian  subjects  of  Muslim  powers  have  come, 
through  pressure  and  protection  from  without, 
to  have  an  existence  in  some  respects  preferable 
to  that  of  the  Muslims  themselves.     The  mysteri- 
ous charm   protecting  the  European  has   come, 
in  part,   to  cover  the  Christian   native,   though 
always  there  hangs  upon  the  horizon  the  black 
cloud  of  possible  massacre.     The  Muslim  mob 
is  ever  there,  and  occasionally  there  appears  a 
Muslim  ruler,  like  *Abd  al-Hamid,  who  nourishes 
great  schemes  of  a  united  and  dominant  Islam. 
But,  finally,  all  that  I  have  just  said  is  apart 
from  the  experiment  at  present  being  tried  in 
the  new  Turkey.     There  the  Young  Turk  party 
is  attempting  to  modernize  Islam  without  destroy- 
ing it.     They  may  succeed  in  the  modernizing, 
but  it  will  be  Islam  no  longer.     Nor,  probably, 
will  the  Young  Turks  be  greatly  distressed  at 
the    loss.     They   are    thinking    of    Turkey    and 
not   of    Islam.     The    Egyptian   nationalists,    on 
the    other    hand,    are    thinking    more    of    Islam 


278  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

than  of  Egypt.  And  therein  is  their  weakness. 
So  much  for  Muslim  states  as  states.  What 
of  the  educated  ruHng  classes  generally?  How 
have  they  felt  towards  Christians?  That  has 
depended  enormously  upon  the  Christians  whom 
they  met.  The  cultured,  educated  Muslim  meet- 
ing the  average  native  Christian  could  hardly 
be  favourably  impressed.  He  would  see  there,  if 
he  looked  at  all,  the  virtues  and  vices,  strength 
and  weakness  of  a  subject  race.  Christianity, 
to  make  an  impression,  would  need  to  be  Chris- 
tianity from  without.  But,  until  the  last  half- 
century,  the  Christianity  that  came  to  Islam  did 
not  come  In  very  peaceful  and  attractive  forms. 
It  is  a  curious  fact  that  the  intercourse  between 
Islam  and  Christendom  in  the  medieval  period 
was  more  intimate  and  close  than  it  has  ever 
been  since.  There  was  intercourse  then,  to  and 
fro,  almost  as  much  as  now,  and  the  peoples  on 
both  sides  were  far  closer  to  one  another  in 
ideas  and  fundamental  civilization.  Certainly 
Chaucer's  Wife  of  Bath  may  have  pilgrimaged 
three  times  to  Jerusalem  and  had  no  more  to 
do  with  the  people  there  than  a  Cook's  tourist  does 
now.     But  Chaucer's  Knight  could  hardly  have 


MISSIONARY   ACTIVITY    OF    MUSLIMS  2/9 

been  a  free  lance  in  Morocco  and  Asia  Minor 
without  making  his  own  impression  on  his 
Saracen  comrades,  and  the  "old  captive"  who, 
in  his  latter  days,  wrote  Aucassin  et  Nicolete 
and  brought  back  from  Tunis  to  Europe  his 
recollections  of  the  public  story-teller,  with  his 
rabab  and  intercalated  scraps  of  chanted  verse, 
the  artistic  form  of  the  ''Cante-fable,"  must 
have  given  his  fellows  among  the  Paynims  some 
strange  ideas  of  Christian  ways. 

Fortunately  we  have  in  the  autobiography  of 
Usama  ibn  Munqidh,  a  Muslim  gentleman  who 
died  in  A.  D.  1188,  a  year  after  the  capture  of 
Jerusalem,  a  record  of  how  the  Christians  there 
impressed  him.  Those  who  had  been  longest 
in  the  country  he  liked  best;  they  had  become 
more  civilized,  that  is  had  taken  on  oriental 
manners.  He  got  on  especially  well  with  the 
Templars;  they  even  gave  him  a  corner  of  their 
church  in  which  he  could  say  his  Muslim  prayers. 
In  general  he  gives  the  impression  that  very 
little  separated  them  from  the  Muslims  and  thus 
throws  a  good  deal  of  light  upon  the  accusations 
against  them,  under  which  their  order  finally 
perished.     But  his  especial  wonder,  as  it  is  the 


280  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

wonder  still  of  every  Muslim,  was  the  easy  inter- 
course between  the  sexes  and  the  lack  of  jealousy 
on  the  part  of  the  men.  His  attitude  of  mind 
seems  to  have  been  much  like  that  of  Jaques  in 
As  you  like  it,  ^^Here  comes  a  pair  of  very 
strange  beasts."  Of  serious  religious  converse, 
I  do  not  remember  any  trace.  But  that,  if  his 
conversations  were  mostly  with  the  Templars, 
need  not  surprise  us.  His  contemporary,  Saladin, 
knew  Christendom  only  under  shield  and  had  the 
old  attitudes.  There  is  an  interesting  passage 
in  the  biography  of  him  by  his  close  companion 
and  friend,  Baha  ad-Din,  which  tells  how  he 
stood  once,  looking  out  over  the  Syrian  sea  and 
described,  as  though  talking  to  himself,  his  hope, 
when  the  crusaders  were  finally  driven  out,  of 
taking  ship  and  subduing  them  in  their  own 
lands.  That  such  should  have  been  his  thoughts 
was  natural  enough.  The  latter  part  of  his  life 
had  been  spent  fighting  in  the  Path  of  Allah; 
he  was  an  amateur  theologian,  too,  in  a  way,  and 
that  would  effectually  close  his  mind  to  new 
ideas;  we  have  no  record,  I  think,  that  he  ever 
met  any  Christian  who  could  have  commended 
Christianity  to  him. 


MISSIONARY   ACTIVITY    OF    MUSLIMS  281 

As  for  the  masses  of  the  MusHm  people,  of  all 
times  down  to  this  day,  their  mind  on  this 
subject  is  easily  reached.  Take  the  degree  of 
knowledge  of  Islam  in  medieval  Europe  and  its 
feelings  and  attitudes  towards  Muslims,  all  as 
reflected  in  popular  romances,  prose  and  metrical, 
and  you  have  exactly  that  of  Islam  with  regard 
to  Christendom.  We  learn,  too,  the  same  thing 
directly,  if  we  take  the  trouble  to  read  a  few  of 
the  innumerable  popular  romances  in  Arabic  deal- 
ing with  the  defense  and  spread  of  the  Faith. 
Some  of  them  have  found  their  way  even  into 
the  Arabian  Nights  and  have  thus  become  gener- 
ally accessible.  Many  of  these  tell  stories  of  the 
crusades;  but  from  the  other  side.  Others  tell 
of  love  between  Muslim  and  Christian  and  of 
triumphant  flight  to  the  lands  of  Islam.  Others, 
again,  of  conversions  to  the  true  faith,  wrought 
through  divine  revelation  and  miracle.  Prac- 
tically all  the  motifs  of  our  popular  medieval 
literature  occur  also  in  Arabic.  Of  course  there 
are  differences  of  treatment.  One  Is  a  markedly 
greater  inclination  towards  theological  discussion. 
The  audience  that  can  be  amused  by  a  solemn 
recitation   of  the  Qur'an  is  still   more  amused 


282  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

when  the  Mushm  champion  pierces  his  adversary 
with  logic  before  over-throwing  him  with  the 
lance.  One  tale,  copied  and  printed  again  and 
again  and  spread  from  Spain  to  Persia,  is  nothing 
but  a  recital  by  a  slave-girl  of  her  theological, 
legal  and  quasi-scientific  knowledge,  in  which 
she  overcomes  all  the  scholars  and  sages  brought 
against  her.  For  another  difference,  I  do  not 
know  anywhere  in  Arabic  a  scene  of  the  brutality 
of  that  in  the  metrical  romance  where  Richard 
Lion-Heart  has  cooked  and  served  before  him  the 
head  of  a  Saracen  and  eats  part  of  it.  The  mar- 
vels, too,  in  the  Muslim  stories  are  more  numerous 
and  luxuriant.  And  the  circle  of  ideas  portrayed 
is  that  of  the  crowds  in  present  day  Cairo, 
Damascus  and  Stamboul.  There  these  tales  are 
still  heard  with  eagerness  and  zest. 

But  given  this  interest  in  the  artistic  portrayal 
of  scenes  in  the  spread  of  the  Faith  by  conquest 
or  by  persuasion,  what  characteristics  do  we  find 
in  Muslims  when  actually  engaged  in  these 
things?  How  do  they  meet  the  reality  when 
thus  rejoicing  in  the  romance?  Again,  medieval 
Europe  is  our  clue.  As  there  and  then  so  now 
for  the  oriental  reality  and  romance  are  still  one. 


MISSIONARY   ACTIVITY    OF    MUSLIMS  283 

These  stories  which  he  dehghts  to  hear  are  for 
him  reaHstic  and  historical.  He  can  imagine 
himself  at  any  time  being  caught  up  in  the  action 
of  one  of  them;  they  might,  so  far  as  he  knows, 
have  befallen  his  next  door  neighbor  or  a  man 
in  the  next  lane.  The  theological  discussions 
are  his.  Even  the  incidents  might  be  his.  The 
zeal  and  hope  and  trust  are  his.  If  it  came  to 
him  to  go  out  and  wander  in  heathen  and  half- 
heathen  lands,  what  happens  in  these  tales  he 
feels  sure  might  happen  to  him. 

And  they  do  go  out  and  thus  wander.  As 
I  have  already  said,  the  nearest  approach  that 
Islam  has  produced  to  the  professional  missionary 
is  the  wandering  darwish-saint.  The  border- 
lands of  Islam  are  full  of  them.  It  is  they 
through  whose  labours  Africa  has  so  nearly 
become  a  Muslim  continent.  Into  the  recesses 
of  Asia  they  have  gone  with  their  teaching. 
Theirs  is  the  religious  romance  and  the  reality 
as  well  of  the  spread  of  Islam.  And  these  men 
have  the  status  of  saints.  They  are  wonder- 
workers; at  the  least,  Allah  hears  and  answers 
their  prayers.  But  when  we  call  them  saints, 
we  must  not  think  of  men  occupied  with  nothing 


284  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

else  but  things  of  the  other  world,  for  whom  this 
world  does  not  exist.  There  are  many  such 
saints  in  Islam ;  but  not  of  those  are  the  mission- 
ary saints  whose  names  are  written  in  the  history 
of  its  spread.  These  were  statesmen-saints,  who 
went  out  into  the  border-lands,  drew  round  them 
little  circles  of  devoted  disciples  by  their  preach- 
ing and  then,  when  strong  enough,  founded  states 
to  be  nuclei  of  further  Muslim  conquest.  In  this 
way  the  history  of  Muhammad  has  reproduced 
Itself  again  and  again  among  his  followers. 

The  truth  is  that  there  lies  in  the  essence  of 
Islam  a  necessity  to  dominate  and  an  inability 
to  distinguish  Church  and  State.  It  is  not  only 
the  Muslim  missionary  who  founds  a  state; 
the  same  fate  regularly  befalls  in  Islam  the  suc- 
cessful religious  reformer.  It  is  as  if  Luther  had 
added  another  to  the  innumerable  German  princi- 
palities, or  Calvin  had  become  actually  as  well 
as  virtually  the  head  of  Geneva.  And  in  such 
a  saint-founded  state  in  Islam,  there  follow 
for  non-Muslims,  always  and  most  intelligibly, 
religious  pressure  and  civil  disabilities.  These 
are  saved,  as  in  earlier  times,  only  by  economic 
necessities.     If    however    they    embrace    Islam, 


MISSIONARY   ACTIVITY    OF    MUSLIMS  285 

they  enter  the  MusHm  brotherhood  and  become 
full  citizens. 

But  given  the  case  where  Islam  penetrates 
where  the  founding  of  a  Muslim  state  is  impos- 
sible, how  does  it  meet  this  limitation  upon  its 
natural  development?  The  situation  of  Islam 
in  China  illustrates  this  difficulty.  There  it  has 
penetrated  into  the  midst  of  the  Chinese  family- 
state,  a  state  which  has  a  strong  feeling  of  loose 
but  absolute  unity;  has  spread  there,  and  now 
exists  with  many  million  adherents.  The  con- 
sequence is  that  there  Muslims  form,  so  far  as 
they  can,  a  state  within  the  state.  They  are 
recognized  by  the  other  Chinese  as  a  great 
national  danger.  Again  and  again  they  have 
risen  in  revolt  and  have  been  crushed.  How 
they  will  be  affected  by  the  opening  of  China 
and  by  the  Pan-Islamic  movement  is  still  to  be 
seen.  It  is  certain  that  they  cannot  assimilate 
themselves  to  and  join  heartily  in  the  general 
development  of  China.  In  India  there  was  at 
one  time  similar  unrest.  The  Wahhabite  move- 
ment spread  there  and  was  checked  with  the 
greatest  difficulty.  How  much  of  it  still  lies 
beneath  the  surface  is  unknown.     The  policy  of 


286  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

the  British  government  has  been  to  give  the  freest 
liberty  to  all  institutions  of  Islam  in  any  way 
possible.  And  I  have  little  question  that  Spain 
would  have  had  a  like  problem  If  the  Moors 
had  not  been  expelled.  Their  expulsion  was  an 
economic  misfortune  but  a  political  necessity. 
In  contact,  as  they  were,  with  the  Muslim  powers 
across  the  Straits,  they  could  not,  in  the  long  run, 
have  submitted  to  Christian  rule.  Only  when 
China  was  absolutely  closed  to  the  world  were 
the  Chinese  Muslims  In  any  measure  quiet. 

In  all  this,  how,  for  better  or  for  worse,  does 
Christianity  contrast?  There  is  at  least  one 
outstanding  point.  Christianity,  too,  has  gone 
out  to  uncivilized  and  semi-civilized  races,  and 
wherever  it  has  gone,  the  race  carrying  It  has 
come  to  rule.  But  this  Is,  apparently,  more  a 
matter  of  race  than  of  religion.  The  status  of 
oriental  Christians  and  their  acceptance  of  that 
status  contrast  sharply  with  the  attitude  of  Mus- 
lims who  must  dominate.  Conversely,  Europeans 
cannot  be  subject  to  non-Europeans,  but  orientals 
can.  In  Christianity,  then,  per  se,  this  necessity  of 
dominating  does  not  enter.  But  in  the  combina- 
tion of  the  necessarily  dominant  European  race 


MISSIONARY   ACTIVITY    OF    MUSLIMS  287 

with  Christianity  lies  the  greatest  problem  of 
the  Christian  missionary.  He  himself  has  very 
seldom  been  a  conqueror  or  a  founder  of  a  state 
or  a  ruler — the  Jesuits  in  Paraguay  and  the 
Americans  in  Hawaii  were  outstanding  exceptions 
— but  his  European  fellows  and  companions  have 
been  all  these  things.  In  consequence,  while 
Christian  governments  do  not  exercise  religious 
pressure,  but  treat  all  faiths  on  the  same  level, 
a  native  Christian  is  still  a  native,  with  a  gulf 
between  himself  and  a  Christian  of  the  dominant 
race.  In  the  modern  world,  at  least,  Christianity 
has  never  been  able  by  its  weight  and  breadth 
to  obliterate  the  distinctions  of  race.  To  have 
done  that  with  success  is  the  glory  and  the 
danger  of  Islam. 


LECTURE  IX 

MUSLIM  IDEAS  ON  EDUCATION 

Let  me  introduce  you  to  this  aspect  of  Islam 
by  bringing  together  a  number  of  my  own  experi- 
ences in  Cairo  and  elsewhere.  These  experiences 
were  of  all  kinds  and  will  illustrate  how  the  past 
is  still  the  present  in  Muslim  lands,  even  while 
the  future  is  knocking  at  the  door. 

At  Cairo  I  had  an  interview  with  the  Head  of 
the  Azhar  University,  still  the  principal  intellect- 
ual center  of  the  Islam  of  the  old  type.  He  was 
so  good  as  to  enquire  about  my  Arabic  studies,  and 
especially  whether  I  had  read  formal  logic.  I 
was  fortunately  able,  with  a  good  conscience, 
to  say  that  I  had  read  some  logic  in  Arabic  and 
to  name  the  book,  whereat  he  was  rather  surprised 
and  greatly  pleased.  But  his  question  was  sig- 
nificant for  all  Muslim  higher  education.  It 
stops  at  the  tools.  It  trains  the  memory  and  the 
power  of  reasoning — always  in  formal  methods — 
and  then  gives  to  neither  any  adequate  material 

on   which  to  work.     The  memory  is  burdened 

288 


MUSLIM  IDEAS  ON  EDUCATION  289 

with  a  verbatim  knowledge  of  the  Qur'an  and 
some  outlines  of  theology  and  law,  and  the  reason 
is  exhausted  in  elaborate  argumentations  there- 
from deduced. 

On  the  same  occasion  I  was  taken  into  the 
mosque  of  Abu  Dawud,  which  is  across  the  street 
from  the  Azhar  mosque  and  is  used  as  an  annex 
to  it.  There  some  classes  were  going  on,  and 
one  of  them  was  quite  largely  attended  by  pupils 
of  all  ages  from  little  boys  to  bearded  men.  It 
had  a  black-board,  too,  beside  which  the  shaykh, 
an  old  man  with  a  kindly,  interested  face,  sat 
on  a  high  chair.  He  was  evidently  an  excellent 
teacher,  for  his  whole  class  was  following  with 
lively  attention  while  he  worked  out  for  them  on 
the  board  the  complicated  processes  of  simple 
addition.  The  mystery  of  carrying  over  the  tens 
was  his  subject  of  the  moment,  and  it  was  fine 
to  watch  the  verve  and  life  with  which  he  lifted 
his  class  along.  But  why,  you  may  well  ask, 
should  a  university  be  teaching  simple  addition?' 
The  answer  is  that  the  teaching  of  even  simple 
addition  is  a  modern  reform.  At  one  time 
Muslim  universities  did  not  teach  even  that. 
They  neglected  all  mathematical  and  physical 
19 


290  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

science  as  outside  of  their  province  and  to  be 
given  over  to  the  crafts  and  trades  as  a  part  of 
their  technical  training.  Of  course,  there  were, 
from  time  to  time,  partial  exceptions,  but  the 
broad  position  of  Muslim  universities  stood  thus. 
The  most  for  which  they  needed  arithmetic  was 
to  reckon  out  the  calendar  and  the  hours  for 
prayer,  and  in  these  calculations  they  soon  came 
to  follow  purely  mechanical  and  traditional 
methods.  The  few  mathematicians,  astronomers 
and  scientists  of  Islam,  then,  were  independent 
scholars,  at  most  extra-mural  teachers. 

But  the  independent  teacher  has  always  had  a 
place  in  Islam.  Muslim  education  and  instruc- 
tion began  with  them,  and  they  have  retained 
their  rights.  Once,  in  the  mosque  of  al-Mu'ayyad, 
I  came  upon  a  scene  which  carried  me  back  to 
the  earliest  days  of  Islam.  An  old  man  was 
seated  in  the  great  colonnade  with  his  back  to  a 
pillar.  Round  him  was  a  little  circle  of  half 
a  dozen  students,  each  with  book  in  hand,  to 
whom  he  was  reading  and  explaining  a  text. 
The  lesson  closed  and  they  rose  up,  one  by  one, 
picked  up  their  shoes  and  went  away.  But  first 
they  each  kissed  the  hand  of  their  old  teacher. 


MUSLIM   IDEAS  ON  EDUCATION  29I 

and  he  was  left  sitting  at  his  pillar  and  reading. 
So  had  the  founders  of  Muslim  science  sat,  before 
colleges  or  universities  were  dreamt  of,  when 
each  scholar  taught  for  himself,  and  his  disciples 
went  forth  with  his  personal  certificate  and 
boasted  of  the  learning  of  their  master. 

I  have  already  spoken  of  the  primary  position 
which  the  learning  by  heart  of  the  Qur'an  holds 
in  Muslim  education.  If  your  ears  are  quick  to 
catch  the  rhythm  and  chant  of  the  sacred  text, 
you  will  hear  it  wherever  students  are  to  be  found. 
In  S.  Sophia,  under  the  great  dome,  I  heard 
a  Turkish  student  being  trained  In  the  precise 
nuance  of  pronunciation  of  the  Arabic,  for  him 
a  foreign  tongue.  And  at  al-Bira,  in  Palestine, 
about  ten  miles  north  from  Jerusalem,  at  a  village 
school  held  In  an  old  oven,  out  of  which  the 
scholars  swarmed  like  rabbits,  I  learned  how  it 
was  possible  In  Semitic  for  the  same  verbal  root 
to  mean  "to  cry  out"  and  *'to  read."  The  dux 
of  the  school  was  put  up  to  read  to  me  from  the 
Qur'an.  At  once  his  lips  became  the  bell  of  a 
trumpet;  his  face  was  as  bronze  and  his  mouth 
and  throat  were  as  brass,  and  with  the  hoarse, 
metallic   falsetto   of   a  phonograph   he   rendered 


292  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

his  piece.  He  had  his  book  before  him;  but  it 
was  evident  that  he  was  reciting  from  memory 
with  the  precise  tones  and  inflections  into  which 
he  had  been  mechanically  drilled.  It  would  be 
hard  to  over-estimate  the  proportion  of  time  and 
labor  given  to  this  accomplishment. 

It  is  a  pretty  custom  in  the  Muhammadan  East 
to  combine  public  fountains  and  primary  schools. 
You  will  find  fountains  without  schools;  but 
rarely  a  school  without  a  fountain.  Every  tourist 
in  Cairo  will  remember  the  exquisite  little  kuttab, 
as  the  primary  school  is  called  in  Egypt,  of 
*Abd  ar-Rahman  on  the  Nahhasln.  On  the  street 
level  is  the  fountain-room,  gay  with  blue  and 
green  faience  tiles  and  bronze  gratings,  and  above 
is  the  school-room  with  open  arches  on  three 
sides,  giving  a  magnificently  distracting  view 
down  the  ever-changing  thoroughfare,  and  from 
which  through  school  hours  comes  steadily  the 
drone  of  childish  voices.  One  afternoon  I  climbed 
the  stone  spiral-stair  which  leads  to  the  school- 
room, and  an  attendant  showed  me  the  copy-books 
of  the  pupils.  Again  the  unchanging  East 
revealed  itself.  These  boys  and  girls  were  copying 
admonitions  on  manners  and  minor  morals  and 


MUSLIM   IDEAS  ON  EDUCATION  293 

especially  on  the  respect  with  which  they  ought 
to  behave  towards  their  fathers,  all  exactly  as  I 
had  read  again  and  again  in  medieval  Arabic 
text-books  on  ethics  and  the  training  of  the 
young.  Nay,  the  chain  went  farther  back  and 
there  were  sentences  which  might  have  dropped 
from  the  Book  of  Proverbs.  If  Islam  has  wasted 
much  time  in  mechanical  use  of  the  memory,  it 
has  known  also  the  value  for  conduct  and  habit 
of  steady  drill  and  admonition.^ 

I  said  "boys  and  girls"  above,  for  a  certain 
number  of  girls  attend  the  kiittahs,  though  the 
proportion  of  them  is  small.  One  of  the  prettiest 
scenes  I  saw  in  Cairo  was  a  little  mob  of  boys 
and  girls,  many-coloured  and  chattering,  rushing 
out  of  the  Azhar,  and  jumping  into  their  shoes 
as  they  passed  the  sacred  threshold.  School  was 
just  over,  for  in  the  Azhar,  as  in  some  American 
universities,  you  can  begin  at  the  oriental  equiv- 
alent to  the  kindergarten  and  go  on,  in  the  same 
institution,  until  you  graduate  as  a  learned  theo- 
logian. But  mixed  education  In  Islam  does  not 
go  beyond  the  kuttdb.     In  the  older  times  the 

*  I  venture  to  refer  in  this  connection  to  my  lecture  on 
The  moral  education  of  the  young  among  Muslims,  printed 
in  the  International  Journal  of  Ethics,  XV,  pp.  286  ff. 


294  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

higher  education  of  girls  was  carried  on  privately, 
and  the  same  still  holds  in  the  untouched  Muslim 
world.  Even  under  the  English  control  in  Egypt, 
the  school  education  of  girls  has  not  proceeded 
beyond  the  secondary  stage.  Yet  it  must  not 
be  thought  that  there  have  not  been  in  Islam  and 
are  not  now  women-scholars  and  even  professors. 
We  find  traces  of  them  in  literature,  and  one  young 
Syrian,  whom  I  met  in  Egypt,  told  me  that  his 
mother  had  received  such  a  scholarly  education. 
In  that  case,  and  I  think  that  the  explanation 
will  hold  of  the  others  generally,  her  father  had 
been  a  learned  shaykh  and  had  taught  her  all  that 
he  knew.  Islam  has  had  many  families  of 
scholars  with  the  golden  line  of  learning  running 
on  from  one  generation  to  another.  So  when  it 
came  to  a  single  daughter,  she  would  heir  the 
tradition. 

But  there  Is  another  side  to  education  in 
the  East,  for  us  a  picturesque  side,  although 
picturesque  with  ignorance  and  corruption.  The 
kuttabs  may  be  said  to  be  the  basis  of  the  educa- 
tional system,  yet  the  teachers  in  them  are  a 
byword  everywhere  for  sloth,  immorality,  greed 
and  ignorance.     The  scholar  Islam  has  always 


MUSLIM   IDEAS  ON  EDUCATION  295 

respected ;  but  upon  the  schoolmaster  it  has  always 
looked  down,  as  feeble  of  wits  and  low  of  conduct. 
If  he  were  not  so,  the  Muslim  asks,  why  is  he 
a  schoolmaster,  and  how  could  he  be  otherwise, 
consorting  always  with  boys?  The  idea  that  a 
scholar  might  profitably  give  his  life  to  school 
education  has  never,  so  far  as  my  knowledge 
goes,  existed  in  Islam.  University  education  and 
the  training  in  the  darwish  fraternities  are,  of 
course,  on  another  footing.  In  these  genuine 
devotion  to  an  ideal  of  service  and  discipleship  to 
a  master  have  always  existed  and  still  exist. 

Here  is  a  story  to  illustrate  the  other  side — 
the  picturesque  but  unhealthy  kuttdb  and  the  fiqt, 
or  schoolmaster,  who  makes  it  so.  It  was  told 
me  by  a  former  Egyptian  Minister  of  Education. 
He  was  the  best  that  Egypt  has  ever  seen,  and 
he  knew  the  necessity  in  the  East  of  immediate 
control.  So  he  would  wander  round,  like  Harun 
ar-Rashid,  to  see  things  for  himself,  and  paid 
unexpected  visits  to  his  subordinates.  On  one 
such  visit  to  a  kuttab,  he  was  puzzled  by  the  multi- 
tude of  strips  of  paper  with  sentences  on  them, 
dangling  from  the  ceiling.  The  fiql  was  not  com- 
municative as  to  what  they  were  for;  so  he  was 


296  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

admonished  to  clear  them  away  and  keep  his  place 
in  better  order.  But  what  they  could  be  doing 
there  was  the  problem.  A  woman  whom  the 
Minister  met  on  the  stairs,  going  up  to  the  kuttdb, 
explained.  She  was  coming  for  a  charm,  and 
the  fiql  would  sell  her  one  of  those  strips  that 
suited  her  case.  They  bore  sentences  from  the 
Holy  Book,  and  hanging  there,  blown  about  by 
the  breath  of  the  innocent  boys  reciting  the  Holy 
Book,  they  acquired  double  virtue.  They  were, 
therefore,  of  sovereign  efficacy,  whether  carried 
as  amulets,  or  washed  off  into  water  which  was 
then  to  be  drunk.  The  Hqi,  in  this  case,  wished 
to  compromise  on  undertaking  not  to  put  up  any 
new  charms  as  his  stock  diminished,  and  urged 
that  it  would  be  impious  to  destroy  those  already 
there  with  the  texts  written  upon  them.  He  had 
eventually  to  be  dismissed. 

No  doubt  he  was  a  very  much  astonished  man 
at  being  treated  with  such  irreligious  rigour. 
But  in  this  case  you  will  observe  the  magical  value 
of  the  written  word  and  the  atmosphere  in  which 
the  masses  of  Muslim  youth  must  have  grown 
up.  I  have  no  reason  to  suppose  that  he  would 
have  been  in  any  way  exceptionable  among  the 


MUSLIM    IDEAS   ON  EDUCATION  29/ 

iiqts  of  a  generation  ago.  The  times  were  chang- 
ing and  he  was  not  changing  with  them.  Let  me 
now  turn  from  these  episodes,  characteristic  as 
they  are,  to  a  more  systematic  consideration  of 
the  whole  question. 

There  seems  to  have  been  no  science  of  educa- 
tion, in  the  modern  sense,  amongst  Muslims;  at 
least,  I  can  find  no  department  of  Arabic  literature 
dealing  specifically  with  pedagogy.  The  nearest 
approach  to  such  a  science  is  to  be  found  in  books 
on  ethical  and  religious  training,  which  are  con- 
nected, though  remotely,  with  the  Greek  treatises 
on  ethics.  These,  however,  tell  mostly  what  a 
boy  should  be  taught  and  only  very  occasionally 
how  he  may  best  be  taught.  It  is  true  that  valu- 
able remarks  on  this  subject  occur  here  and  there, 
and  that  some  exceptional  men  gave  attention 
to  it.  With  the  systems  of  one  or  two  of  them 
I  shall  deal  later.  They  made  no  impression 
on  the  general  Muslim  mind.  Nor  is  this  to 
be  wondered  at.  Muslim  practice  was  to  repeat 
aloud  until  the  thing  was  learned,  learned,  that 
is,  by  heart.  They  had  observed,  too,  that  no 
special  thought  was  called  for,  only  continued 
repetition.     And,  as  a  stimulus  to  the  repetition. 


298  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

the  Prophet  had  wisely  remarked,  "Verily  the 
green  rod  is  one  of  the  trees  of  Paradise."  Mus- 
lim theory,  on  the  other  hand,  was  that  while  the 
repetition  was  going  on,  Allah  coordinately  pro- 
duced knowledge  in  the  heart.  The  two  were 
separate  things ;  but  mysteriously  co-related.  Let 
me  illustrate  this  from  the  usage  of  the  Arabic 
language  itself.  There  are  two  verbs  in  Arabic 
meaning  *'to  know,"  'alinm  and  'arafa,  'Alima 
means  simply  "to  know" ;  you  find  the  knowledge 
in  your  mind,  and  that  is  all  there  is  about  it. 
Of  course,  you  know,  too,  that  Allah  put  it  there. 
But  'arafa  means  to  observe  a  thing  and  therefore 
to  know  it.  It  is  the  German  kennen,  and  the 
things  which  you  thus  know  are  ma'arif,  Kennf- 
nisse.  Now  the  whole  educational  vocabulary 
of  Arabic  is  derived  from  the  root  'alima  and  is 
related  to  this  instinctive  God-given  knowledge. 
With  this  dependence  on  the  direct  working  of 
Allah  systems  of  pedagogy  could  hardly  co-exist. 
It  is  the  exact  opposite  of  our  theories  of  taking 
notice  and  paying  attention. 

We  may,  for  convenience  and  clarity,  divide 
education  in  Islam  under  three  heads :  primary 
education;  technical  education;  theological  educa- 


MUSLIM  IDEAS  ON  EDUCATION  299 

tion.  The  immense  majority  of  Muslims  would 
not  have  recognized  technical  education  as  per- 
taining to  our  subject,  and,  also,  would  have  held 
that  all  education  was  and  must  be  theological. 
But  taking  this  division,  which  will,  I  think, 
justify  itself  in  the  sequel,  the  system  of  primary 
education  is  already  to  some  extent  before  you. 
There  seems  to  have  been  no  control  of  £qts  by 
the  state.  A  man  might  set  up  as  one  on  a  very 
slender  store  of  knowledge.  He  had  only  to  put 
on  a  large  turban,  open  a  school  and  trust  to  his 
luck.  But  a  large  proportion  of  the  primary 
schools  were,  like  the  public  fountains  to  which 
they  were  attached,  supported  by  funds  in  waqf, 
or  mortmain.  In  that  case  the  schoolmaster  would 
be  appointed  by  some  board  of  trustees.  The 
education  In  these  kuttdbs  centred  and  centres 
round  the  Qur'an.  After  a  boy  has  learned  the 
alphabet  he  is  taught  to  read  from  the  Qur'an, 
and  the  immense  bulk  of  his  work  thereafter  is 
to  learn  the  Qur'an  by  heart.  It  is  rarely,  of 
course,  that  he  reaches  the  end  of  that  book;  but 
to  be  a  hdfis,  a  "holder"  of  the  Qur'an  in  its 
entirety.  Is  the  goal  set  before  the  Muslim  boy, 
and  on  that  everything  else  must  wait.     Inciden- 


3CX)  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

tally,  along  with  the  Qur'an,  he  may  learn  some 
plain  writing ;  he  will  have  some  religious  instruc- 
tion and  get  by  heart  some  prayers.  But  writing 
and,  still  more,  arithmetic,  are  regarded  as  belong- 
ing to  business  and  to  be  learned  in  business 
rather  than  at  school.  All  the  above,  of  course, 
belongs  to  unreformed  Islam.  Primary  schools  in 
Egypt  and  elsewhere  are  in  a  very  confused  state 
of  transition. 

Theological  education  and  university  education 
may  be  regarded,  for  our  present  case,  as  inter- 
changeable terms.     All  Muslim  science  revolved 
round  theology  and  what  could  not  be  brought 
into  such  dependence  was  gradually  rejected.     It 
began  with  the  stating,  developing  and  defense 
of   the    faith.     The   first    scholars    and   teachers 
were  theologians,  and  all  their  interests  connected 
with   the   youthful   growth   of   their   theological 
system.     Their  jurisprudence  was  a  system  of 
church  law — canon  law   in  the  precise   sense — 
and   as   the  state   was   essentially  theocratic   its 
theory  was  inextricably  intertwined  with  theology. 
In    all    aspects    of   life    the    theological    motive 
dominated;  every  path   of  thought  led  back  to 
Allah.     Then    the   Greek    civilization    broke    in 


MUSLIM   IDEAS  ON  EDUCATION  3OI 

through  the  two  doorways  of  Syriac  and  Persian 
upon  this  church-state.  For  a  time,  an  impression 
seemed  to  be  made.  Al-Ma'mun  (reg.  A.  H. 
198-218  =  A.  D.  813-833)  founded  at  Baghdad 
an  academy  of  science,  and  the  Fatimids  long 
after  (A.  H.  396  =  A.  D.  1005),  following  their 
bent,  founded  at  Cairo  a  Dar  al-hikma,  or  Abode 
of  Wisdom.  But  it  was  all  of  no  avail.  The 
Muslim  mind  had  received  its  bias,  and  its 
university  was  to  be  a  school  of  theology. 

In   the   development   of   this   education   three 
stages  may  roughly  be  traced.     From  the  earliest 
times   instruction   was  given  by  the  learned   in 
mosques.     This    instruction    was    on    a    private 
basis,  and  the  mosque  was  used  for  convenience. 
It  was  the  common  meeting-place  and  was  free 
to  all  for  any  lawful  purpose.     The  pupils  paid 
their  teachers  and  received  certificates  from  them 
individually    for    the    courses    which    they    had 
attended.     The  subjects,  from  the  first,  were  the 
reading  and  interpreting  of  the  Qur'an,  the  pass- 
ing on   and   the   explanation   of   the   traditions 
from   Muhammad  and  of  the  whole  corpus  of 
canon  law.     Later  were  gradually  added   scho- 
lastic theology,  grammar,  lexicography,  prosody 


302  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

and  rhetoric  of  Arabic,  including  a  great  deal 
of  what  we  would  call  belles  lettres,  logic  and 
such  elements  of  mathematics  and  astronomy  as 
were  needed   for  calendar  calculations. 

A  second  stage  was  reached  when  these  teachers 
were  subsidized  and  organized  by  the  state  into 
teaching  corporations.  Private  individuals,  also, 
endowed  similar  corporations,  and  mosques  were 
assigned  to  them  or  built  for  their  use,  according 
to  the  earlier  custom  of  the  individual  teachers. 
These  were  then  called  madrasas.  How  early 
this  change  took  place  is  quite  uncertain. 

The  final  development,  which  we  find  first  at 
Naisabur  in  Khurasan,  in  A.  H.  459  (=A.  D. 
1066),  was  the  equipment  of  these  corporations 
with  funds  for  the  support  of  the  students.  So 
al-Ghazzali  himself  tells  us  that  he  and  his  brother 
became  students  at  a  madrasa  when  their  own 
money  was  all  gone.  They  thus  got  food  for 
their  need. 

But  though  the  individual  teachers  had  been 
thus  gathered  Into  continuous  corporations,  their 
personalities  were  in  no  way  merged  in  these 
organizations.  Nothing  of  the  nature  of  our 
general  graduation  or  degree  appeared ;  the  thing 


MUSLIM   IDEAS  ON  EDUCATION  303 

sought  by  the  student  was  still  the  certificate 
of  the  individual  teacher.  And  this  had  a  further 
development,  resembling,  but  far  broader  than, 
the  wanderings  of  German  students  from  one 
university  to  another.  Whenever  a  teacher  of 
mark  appeared,  students  would  flock  from  the 
remotest  Muslim  countries  to  learn  from  him  and 
get  his  certificate.  This  was  fostered,  too,  by  the 
desire  of  Muslim  students  to  gather  together  as 
many  traditions  handed  down  from  the  Prophet 
as  possible,  and  these  from  the  best  and  most 
immediate  authorities.  Almost  incredible  stories 
are  told  of  the  journeys  made  and  the  collections 
of  traditions  formed  under  the  influence  of  this 
ambition.  And  along  with  the  traditions,  the 
teacher  gave  the  student  formal  written  permis- 
sion to  pass  them  on  to  others.  By  this  means 
the  student  was  enabled  to  take  a  place  in  the  long 
chain  of  traditionalists  through  whose  ears  and 
lips  the  sayings  and  doings  of  the  Prophet  had 
gone ;  he  obtained  a  humble  part  in  what  was,  in  a 
sense,  an  apostolic  succession.  In  the  Azhar  at 
the  present  day  general  examinations  have  taken 
the  place  of  the  professor's  personal  certificate  in 
all  subjects  except  those  traditions.     There  the 


304  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

unbroken  past  has  maintained  itself,  and  the 
student  still  receives  the  professor's  permission 
to  be  a  bearer  of  tradition. 

We  are  now  left  with  all  the  arts  and  sciences 
which  cannot  be  made  ancillary  to  theology. 
These  we  may  group,  for  convenience,  under  the, 
for  us,  familiar  term  of  "technical  education." 
It  is  true  that  the  Muslim,  on  his  side,  would 
have  refused  to  regard  them  as  education  at  all, 
and  that  we,  on  our  side,  must  perilously  stretch 
the  word  "technical"  if  it  Is  to  cover  our  present 
subject.  But  the  idea  of  technical  education  lies, 
undoubtedly,  in  the  centre,  and  from  it  all  the 
arts  and  sciences  now  to  be  considered  can  be 
reached.  Philosophy  may,  perhaps,  to  us  seem 
to  lie  farthest  apart  of  all;  but  even  philosophy 
is  thought  of  by  the  Muslim  as  the  special  pur- 
suit of  a  class  of  men  called  philosophers,  and 
not  as  the  science  of  the  sciences,  the  ultimate 
theory  of  all  being.  The  philosophers  them- 
selves may  have  had  that  view;  Islam  has  never 
yielded  it  to  them.  And  the  teaching,  even,  of 
the  theorizings  of  the  philosophers,  was  never  a 
university  subject.  When  a  Muslim  studied  it, 
he  did  so  individually  and  secretly  with  what 


MUSLIM    IDEAS  ON  EDUCATION  305 

books  he  could  find.  Hostile  descriptions  of 
philosophy  and  attacks  upon  it  were,  of  course, 
a  normal  part  of  scholastic  theology  as  regularly 
taught. 

We  have  already  seen  how  far  mathematics 
and  astronomy  were  admitted  to  the  sacred  circle. 
Further  pursuit  of  them — after  the  early  'Abbasid 
period  of  culture  had  passed — was  due  to  Individ- 
ual eccentricity.  The  other  physical  sciences  fell 
naturally  into  the  training  of  the  physician. 
That  must  have  been  affected  by  the  great  hos- 
pitals at  Baghdad  and  elsewhere,  the  last  heirs 
of  the  Persian  school  of  medicine  at  Gondeshapur ; 
the  pursuit  of  science  under  the  Fatimids  and  the 
Assassins  was  so  apart  from  the  main  orthodox 
current  that  no  reckoning  need  be  taken  of  it. 
But  in  general,  the  physician  was  trained  by  the 
physician,  and  the  traditions  of  medicine  tended 
to  linger  among  Jews  and  Christians  more  than 
among  Muslims. 

Again,  the  arts  as  opposed  to  the  crafts  did  not 
exist  in  Islam;  the  same  words,  san'a  and  sina'a, 
stood  for  both  art  and  craft.  There  were  no  fine 
arts  In  our  sense.  The  artist,  rather,  was  an 
artisan,  and  the  artisan  was  often  an  artist. 
20 


306  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

Calligraphy,  illuminating-,  miniature-painting  were 
the  work  of  craftsmen;  to  painting  on  the 
grand  scale  w  t  have  only  a  handful  of  allusions ; 
at  best  it  was  decorative.  It  is  as  though  the 
artists  of  the  Renaissance  had  done  nothing  but 
adorn  manuscripts  or  walls  on  a  day's  wage. 
Sculpture  did  not  exist;  but  carving  took  its 
place  and  was  a  craft  like  painting.  But  the 
artisan  in  Islam  was  also  an  artist,  in  so  far  that 
he  designed  for  himself  as  he  went  along.  Of 
these  artisan-artists  we  find  little  or  no  individual 
mention.  Save  when  some  outstanding  work  has 
to  be  mentioned,  they  vanish  into  the  anonymity 
of  the  guild.  There  are  no  biographical  diction- 
aries of  calligraphers,  painters,  carvers — artists  in 
general — while  of  poets  there  are  very  many. 
At  the  most  their  individual  mention  will  come 
in  books  dealing  with  the  history  of  the  craft. 

Architecture,  too,  was  in  the  hands  of  the 
builders,  and  there  is  no  distinction  possible  in 
Arabic  between  architect  and  master-builder.  In 
this  respect,  even  medieval  Europe  had  made  a 
further  development  with  its  architect-monks. 
At  the  highest,  the  architect-builder  was  a  mathe- 
matician and  an  engineer;  his  only  touch  with 


MUSLIM  IDEAS  ON  EDUCATION  3O7 

pure  theory  was  through  mathematics.  And 
down  to  the  Turkish  period  it  may  be  said 
broadly  that  these  architect-builders  were  not 
Muslims.  There  was  never  any  such  thing  as 
Arab  architecture,  and  when  we  speak  of  Muslim 
architecture,  all  that  can  be  meant  under  that 
phrase  is  the  architecture  developed  for  Muslim 
purposes  in  Muslim  countries  by  non-Muslim 
builders  on  Byzantine,  Roman  or  Persian  models. 
The  vehicles  by  which  this  knowledge  was 
preserved,  developed  and  taught  were  the  trade 
guilds,  which  were  and  are  highly  organized 
in  the  East.  These  had  a  fixed  apprentice  system, 
and  the  master  workman  was  called  the  mii'aUim 
or  "teacher."  It  is  curious  evidence  of  the  pre- 
dominance of  Christians  in  these  organizations, 
that  mii'allim  came  also  to  be  an  ordinary  word 
for  a  Christian.  He  was  a  teacher,  whatever 
else  he  might  be.  In  the  guild  his  instruction 
was  genuine  and  thorough.  By  it  the  secrets 
of  the  craft  were  passed  down  and  also  tales 
of  its  foundation,  like  those  of  free-masonry, 
and  of  its  first  workmen.  If  any  one  wished, 
then,  to  acquire  a  craft  or  art,  whether  as  amateur 
or  as  professional,  his  only  way  was  to  put  him- 


f 


308  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

self  under  one  of  these  masters.  The  primary 
schools,  for  example,  might  possibly  teach  writing 
in  a  certain  rude,  elementary  way — the  scholar's 
or  the  business  man's  hand.  To  learn  an  elegant 
hand  it  was  necessary  to  go  to  a  calligrapher. 
Similarly,  the  ordinary  operations  of  commercial 
arithmetic  could  be  learned  from  a  professional 
weigher  in  a  bazaar.^ 

Whatever  knowledge,  then,  could  not  easily  be 
passed  on  by  one  of  these  three  channels  tended 
to  vanish.  The  instruction  in  the  primary  schools, 
under  the  public  contempt  of  the  schoolmaster, 
would  naturally  become  worse  and  worse.  That 
afforded  by  the  guilds  and  by  professional  men 
generally  would  equally  naturally  crystallize  into 
trade  secrets,  revivified  only  from  time  to  time  by 
the  genius  of  some  learner.  The  universities 
would  afford  the  only  continuous  protection  to 
culture  and  humane  learning.  But  they  were 
primarily  theological  schools,  and  every  subject 
taught  in  them  had  to  justify  its  existence  by  a 
theological  test  and  to  pay  a  theological  tribute. 

It  was  natural,  then,  that  these  unattached,  free, 

^  On  trade-guilds  in  present-day  Damascus,  see  a  pa- 
per by  EHa  Qudsi  in  the  Proceedings  of  the  Sixth  Con- 
gress of  Orientalists,  ii.,  pp.  1-34. 


MUSLIM  IDEAS  ON  EDUCATION  3O9 

useless — as  it  would  seem — speculations,  which 
are  the  food  of  the  true  intellectual  life,  should 
gradually  be  rejected,  should  dwindle,  peak  and 
pine.  Then  as  now,  when  the  subjects  taught 
in  a  university  have  to  justify  their  existence 
at  the  bar  of  usefulness,  it  is  ill  with  the  future 
of  that  university,  and  with  the  civilization  which 
it  represents.^ 

But  while  these  were  the  paths  on  which  Islam 
moved  and  the  ends  which  it  reached,  we  must 
not  think  that  no  Muslim  ever  saw  the  problem 
of  teaching  more  clearly  or  worked  out  more 
efficient  plans  of  education.  We  find  traces,  from 
time  to  time,  of  such  insurgents,  and  conspicuous 
among  them  is  Ibn  Khaldun,  the  Moorish  histor- 
ian or,  rather,  philosopher  on  history,  who  died 
in  A.  H.  808  (A.  D.  1405).  In  his  Prolegomena 
he  devotes  to  education  a  number  of  sections  full 
of  good  sense,  but  which  had  no  effect  whatever 
on  the  practice  of  the  Muhammadan  peoples. 
Their  usefulness  for  us  is  that  they,  while  show- 
ing Ibn  Khaldun's  clear  insight,   show  us  also 

^  I  have  dealt  at  greater  length  with  the  utilitarianism 
of  Islam,  religious  and  secular,  in  my  Religious  Attitude 
atid  Life  of  Islam,  pp.  119,  ff.     It  had  vast  consequences. 


310  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

many   elements  in  the  situation  which  he  was 
combatting. 

Thus  one  is  directed  against  the  prevalent 
multiplication  of  minor  treatises  and  commen- 
taries and  "methods"  of  different  kinds  which  the 
student  was  required  to  read  and  learn  before 
he  could  fairly  reach  the  subject  itself.  He  gives 
two  illustrations  of  this.  One  is  the  Malikite 
school  of  canon  law,  that  chiefly  followed  in 
North  Africa.  The  student  could  spend  his 
whole  life  in  reading  treatise  after  treatise  on 
this,  commentary  and  super-commentary,  and  at 
the  end  have  no  more  than  he  would  have  got 
from  a  single  sound  manual.  They  were  all 
everlastingly  reiterating  in  different  words  the 
same  points.  The  other  is  Arabic  philology, 
which  no  one,  in  Ibn  Khaldun's  opinion,  could 
ever  control  in  its  entirety,  certainly  no  one  since 
the  time  of  the  early  masters  and  founders  of  the 
science.  He  had  heard  of  a  certain  contemporary 
grammarian  in  Egypt,  Ibn  Hisham,  who  had 
the  reputation  of  having  mastered  it  all ;  but  who 
could  follow  him!  And  Arabic  philology  was 
a  strictly  ancillary  science,  a  mere  tool  for  the 
study  of  others.     There  can  be  no  question  that 


MUSLIM   IDEAS  ON   EDUCATION  3II 

Ibn  Khaldun  has  here  laid  his  finger  on  one  of  the 
great  weaknesses,  not  only  of  Muslim  pedagogy, 
but  of  the  whole  Muslim  civilization.  The  rage 
of  commentary  writing  and  the  willingness  to 
write  commentaries  that  were  simple  compila- 
tions or  re-hashings  of  the  old, — ''chewed  by 
blind  old  scholiasts  o'er  and  o'er" — had  sapped 
originality  and  independence  out  of  the  Muslim 
mind.  They  became  afraid  of  the  new  and  sought 
always  to  shelter  themselves  under  the  words  of 
some  departed  master.  Much  of  the  responsibility^ 
for  this  attitude  of  mind  must  be  laid  to  the 
doctrine  of  the  imitation  of  the  Prophet.  The 
principle  of  unquestioning  discipleship  wiped  out 
all  free  initiative. 

The  next  section  deals  with  the  reverse  evil, 
yet  one  sprung  from  the  same  root  of  dependence 
on  the  wisdom  of  the  past.  Highly  abbreviated 
text-books  were  much  in  use,  as  is  the  case  to 
this  day ;  every  Azhar  student  has  his  little  bundle 
of  mutun,  as  they  are  now  called.  The  first  task 
of  a  student  when  he  approached  a  new  subject 
was  to  learn  such  an  abstract  by  heart;  after  that 
he  might  go  on  to  discover  what  it  meant.  Ibn 
Khaldiin  had  many  objections  to  this.     For  the 


312  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

sake  of  conciseness  obscure  words  were  used. 
The  student's  command  of  Arabic  was  injured 
by  the  compressed  style.  Having  to  learn  it  all 
by  heart  at  once,  he  had  no  gradual  introduction 
to  the  difficulties  of  the  subject.  He  was  over- 
whelmed by  a  mob  of  unexplained  and  novel 
ideas.  Ibn  Khaldun  was  emphatically  of  the 
school  of  pedagogy  which  lays  stress  on  under- 
standing rather  than  memorizing. 

So  he  has  his  own  method.  Teaching  should 
be  gradual,  step  by  step  in  the  exact  sense.  A 
subject  should,  for  the  majority  of  students,  be 
gone  over  thrice,  though  some  minds,  undoubt- 
edly, could  take  it  faster.  First,  as  a  prelimin- 
ary training,  a  general  outline  of  the  subject 
should  be  presented.  Secondly,  the  whole  should 
be  gone  over  again,  and  its  particular  elements, 
difficulties  and  contradictions  explained.  And, 
thirdly,  it  should  be  again  revised,  leaving  no 
word  nor  detail  untouched.  But  many  teachers 
overwhelm  their  untrained  pupils  with  all  the 
details  at  once,  thinking  it  a  good  training.  They 
do  not  know  what  training  really  is.  Taught 
in  that  way  the  pupil  becomes  perplexed ;  he  thinks 
the  difficulty  is  In  the  subject,  so  he  gives  it  up 


MUSLIM   IDEAS  ON  EDUCATION"  3I3 

and  turns  lazy.  Really,  it  is  only  bad  teaching. 
Further,  the  student  should  not  be  disturbed  in 
the  use  of  his  text-books.  Not  until  he  has 
learned  one  thoroughly  should  he  be  given 
another.  Further,  when  a  subject  has  been  begun 
it  should  be  pursued  steadily  and  without  inter- 
ruption until  it  is  finished.  Two  subjects  should 
not  be  studied  at  once. 

Such  are  Ibn  Khaldian's  ideas  on  teaching. 
To  them  he  adds  here  a  discussion  of  the  value 
of  logic  and  of  the  use  of  words  which  cuts  to 
the  very  heart  of  the  Muslim  decadence. 

He  begins  by  telling  his  reader  that  he  is  going 
to  give  him  an  Invaluable  bit  of  advice,  a  treasure 
for  all  time,  which  will  lead  him  to  brilliant  suc- 
cess in  his  studies.  Practically,  It  is  this.  Do 
not  make  use  of  formal  logic ;  use  rather,  directly, 
the  intelligence  which  Allah  has  given  you. 
Regard  the  problem  before  you  and  turn  to  Allah 
for  help,  and  he  will  Illumine  your  mind.  It  is 
of  the  nature  of  the  mind  of  man,  especially 
when  thus  directed  in  faith  to  Allah,  to  go 
straight  to  the  truth  of  a  matter.  And,  second, 
always  go  back  from  words,  whether  spoken  or 
written,  to  the  ideas,  and  the  things  which  they 


314  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

represent.  Deal  with  the  reahties  and  not  with 
their  symbols.  For  what  is  logic?  It  is  simply 
a  description  of  the  workings  of  the  mind.  It 
is  a  science  rather  than  an  art,  although  it  can 
occasionally  be  used  as  an  art  to  clarify  the  opera- 
tions of  thought.  Great  thinkers  have  always 
dispensed  with  it  and  have  made  use  of  the 
intuitions  which  Allah  gave  them.  And  what  are 
words?  They  are  really  veils  which  conceal 
thought  in  clothing  it.  The  student  must  pass 
beyond  them.  But  alas  for  Islam !  Few  have 
been  the  Muslims  who  have  taken  Ibn  Khaldun's 
advice. 

In  his  next  section  Ibn  Khaldiin  evidently 
thought  he  was  further  developing  this  same 
idea,  while,  in  reality,  he  was  a  prey  to  one  of 
the  deadliest  superstitions  of  Islam.  All  sciences, 
he  says,  fall  into  one  or  other  of  two  classes. 
They  are  either  sought  for  their  own  sakes  or 
they  are  sought  only  as  tools,  as  means  of  access 
to  the  sciences  which  are  valuable  for  themselves. 
The  student  must  beware  lest  he  forget  this  dis- 
tinction, and  spend  too  much  time  over  what  is 
only  a  means  to  an  end.  Good  examples  of  such 
ancillary  sciences  are  logic  and  Arabic  philology. 


MUSLIM  IDEAS  ON  EDUCATION  315 

This,  especially  as  fortified  by  these  two  examples, 
seems  to  be  admirably  good  sense.  But  behind 
it  lies  the  whole  utilitarian  position.  Elsewhere 
Ibn  Khaldun  expounds  what  are  those  sciences 
which  are  to  be  sought  for  their  own  sakes.  They 
are  those  useful  either  for  life  In  this  world  or 
in  order  to  gain  the  world  to  come.  Yet  he  him- 
self, to  judge  from  his  books,  was  as  interested 
as  Browning's  Grammarian  in  unprofitable  things. 
He  next  throws  a  flood  of  light  upon  the  use 
in  his  day  of  the  Qur'an  in  schools.  It  was 
universally  admitted  to  be  the  basis  and  character- 
istic sign  of  Muslim  education.  Upon  it  all  else 
was  built.  Thus  the  Faith  was  firmly  planted 
in  the  heart  in  its  impressionable  time.  But  the 
different  Muslim  countries  had  different  ways 
of  combining  the  Qur'an  with  the  other  elements 
In  education.  The  people  of  western  North 
Africa  (al-Maghrib)  taught  Qur'an  and  nothing 
else.  They  might  fill  in  with  questions  of  dif- 
ference in  exegesis,  but  they  taught  with  It  no 
traditions  or  canon  law  or  poetry  or  philosophy. 
In  consequence,  they  knew  the  Qur'an  and  the 
Qur'an  only;  but  they  knew  it  better  than  any 
other  Muslim  people.     The  people  of  Spain,  on 


3l6  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

the  other  hand,  and  by  Spain  (al-Andalus)  he 
can  mean  only  the  Kingdom  of  Granada,  made 
their  education  broadly  literary.  The  basis  cer- 
tainly was  the  Qur'an,  but  they  did  not  stop  there. 
They  mixed  with  it  the  learning  of  poetry  by 
heart,  the  art  of  letter  writing,  the  rules  of 
Arabic  grammar  and  writing  a  good  hand.  In 
consequence  their  boys  had  received  a  primary 
education  fitting  them  for  the  study  of  any 
science  for  which  they  could  find  a  teacher. 
Many  later  sciences  had  not,  apparently,  found 
their  way  into  Spain.  As  for  the  people  of 
Tunis,  it  was  mostly  the  study  of  tradition  which 
they  added  to  that  of  the  Qur'an.  They  paid 
great  attention  also  to  the  readings  of  the  Qur'an 
and  to  handwriting.  On  the  eastern  peoples  of 
Islam  (al-Mashriq)  Ibn  Khaldun  had  no  certain 
Information.  Their  principal  care,  he  understood, 
was  given  to  the  Qur'an  and  science,  meaning 
evidently  theological  science.  Writing  with  them 
was  an  art  and  to  be  learned  from  a  calligrapher. 
The  primary  schools  paid  no  attention  to  it,  and 
the  tablets  from  which  boys  learned  to  read  were 
written  in  an  ordinary  plain  hand. 

These  different  systems  of  education  had  grave 


MUSLIM  IDEAS  ON  EDUCATION  317 

consequences  for  command  of  language.  Those 
who  Hmited  education  to  the  Our'an,  Hke  the 
peoples  of  western  North  Africa  and  Tunis  had 
no  richness  or  fluency  of  expression.  The  only 
type  of  language  they  really  knew  was  the  sacred 
dialect  of  the  Qur'an,  and  Muslims  are  not 
permitted  to  imitate  that.  On  this  point  the 
Tunisians  were  rather  better  off,  as  their  studies 
had  not  been  so  purely  Qur'anic.  But  the  people 
of  Spain,  because  of  their  literary  training,  had 
a  peculiarly  happy  command  of  the  Arabic 
tongue.  They  might  be  deficient  in  the  theolog- 
ical sciences,  but  in  helles  lettres  they  were  pre- 
eminent. Their  system  of  primary  education  was 
ideally  the  best.  Based  upon  it,  a  certain  Qadi 
Abu  Bakr  ibn  al-'Arabi  (d.  A.  D.  II48=A.  H. 
543)  had  devised  a  scheme  of  education.  First, 
the  boy  should  be  trained  in  the  knowledge  of 
Arabic  philology  and  poetry;  the  pressure  of 
the  corruption  of  the  language  called  for  that. 
Then  he  should  be  drilled  in  arithmetic.  Then 
he  should  learn  the  Qur'an,  which  would  be  easy 
for  him  with  such  an  introduction.  After  that 
would  come  the  different  branches  of  theological 
education,  the  fimdamentals  of  the  Faith,  canon 


3l8  ASPECTS   OF    ISLAM 

law,  the  art  of  argument,  tradition,  etc.  This 
scheme  Ibn  Khaldiin  thought  excellent;  but  cus- 
tom, he  saw,  would  be  too  much  for  it,  and, 
besides,  there  was  something  to  be  said  for  the 
early  learning  of  the  Qur'an.  It  was  a  great 
thing  to  have  the  Qur'an  with  its  moral  precepts 
and  religious  positions  thoroughly  implanted  in 
the  memory  in  early  youth.  The  boy  was  then 
under  governors  and  could  be  compelled  to  learn 
it.  But  if  it  were  left  for  a  later  stage  of 
education  when  maturity  was  approaching  with 
all  its  temptations,  had  we  any  certainty  that 
he  would  ever  learn  it  at  all?  Ibn  Khaldun 
feared  that  we  had  not,  and  we,  in  our  day  and 
with  our  experience  of  the  Bible  in  colleges,  must, 
I  think,  agree  with  him. 

His  last  positions  are  that  over  strictness  and 
severity  are  hurtful  to  character  and  attainments, 
and  that  the  common  practice  of  more  mature 
students  of  journeying  from  one  madrasa  to 
another  for  the  sake  of  meeting  personally  as 
many  teachers  as  possible  was  to  be  approved. 
What  is  learned  by  such  conference,  face  to  face, 
makes  a  far  deeper  impression  than  study  from 
books.     Having  many  teachers,  too,  enables  the 


MUSLIM   IDEAS  ON  EDUCATION  3I9 

student  to  discern  what  is  essential  and  what  is 
formal.  Each  teacher  has  his  own  method;  but 
by  hearing  one  teacher  after  another  the  methods 
are  eliminated  while  the  knowledge  remains. 

Ibn  Khaldiin  marked  high  water  in  Muslim 
pedagogy,  as  almost  everywhere  in  the  broad 
range  of  Muslim  science.  But  Islam  did  not  hear 
him;  only  In  these  last  years  of  awakening  has 
it  begun  to  listen  to  him.  Of  that  awakening 
it  is  not  my  purpose  to  speak  here  at  any  length. 
The  mission  schools  and  colleges  have  worked 
therein  as  valiant  pioneers,  and  they  are  begin- 
ning now  to  see  of  the  fruit  of  their  toil  in  the 
new  government  schools  which  are  gradually 
and  of  necessity  supplanting  them.  With  these 
government  schools  now  lies  the  problem  of  the 
future,  and  it  is  for  them  to  retain  and  develop 
the  new  life  from  which  they  have  sprung. 
The  inherent  and  racial  tendencies  and  dangers, 
against  which  they  will  constantly  have  to  fight, 
are  plain  from  what  I  have  already  said.  Let  me 
instance  two  only,  of  w^iich  I  had  personal 
experience  In  Egypt.  The  oriental  school-boy 
must  learn  to  play  games  and  to  play  without 
cheating  and  without  jealousy   or  bad   feeling. 


320  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

On  this,  for  its  influence  on  the  development  of 
character,  the  EngHsh  control  in  Egypt  is  rightly 
laying  stress.  But  English  masters  there  told 
me  that  while  the  foot-ball  teams  of  their  schools 
were  quite  equal  to  those  of  the  English  schools, 
they  had  not  yet  succeeded  in  bringing  them 
to  honourable  play;  they  would  cheat  if  they  got 
the  chance.  And  one  Egyptian  school-boy  told 
me  that  he  preferred  to  exercise  in  the  gym- 
nasium; playing  games  gave  him  bad  feelings 
towards  his  comrades. 

Another  necessity  will  be  to  teach  in  a  language 
that  the  pupil  can  understand  and  to  cease  to 
veil  education  in  a  literary  dialect  which  not  one 
per  cent  of  the  people  can  follow.  This  holds 
especially  of  Arabic  speaking  countries  where 
the  difference  between  the  Arabic  spoken  by  all 
and  the  Arabic  of  literature  is  as  great  as  that 
between  modern  and  classical  Greek.  Thus  in 
Egypt  the  hopeless  attempt  is  being  made  to 
screw  all  education  up  to  this  pseudo-classical 
standard.  How  hopeless  is  this  attempt  a  single 
instance  will  show.  One  day  in  Cairo  I  was 
shown  most  courteously  by  the  Principal  of  what 
is  called  the  Cadis  College  over  his  institution. 


MUSLIM   IDEAS  ON  EDUCATION  321 

This  is  a  professional  school  for  the  training  of 
Qadis  and  legal  officials  generally  on  the  native 
side,  and  it  is  hoped  that  its  influence  may  in 
time  lead  to  a  reform  of  the  Azhar  from  within. 
The  Principal  first  described  to  me  the  curriculum 
of  the  college  and  told  me  that  the  language  used 
throughout  was  literary  Arabic.  Nothing  else 
was  allowed  in  the  class-rooms,  and  they  expected 
in  a  year  to  be  able  to  enforce  the  use  of  it 
among  the  students  outside  of  the  class-rooms. 
Then  I  was  taken  to  hear  parts  of  the  lectures. 
One,  on  canon  law,  especially  interested  me.  The 
lecturer  knew  his  subject  and  was  making  it  plain 
to  his  class.  But  suddenly  there  dropped  from 
his  lips  a  phrase  of  the  purest  colloquial.  Mush 
kidaf  said  he,  "Isn't  that  so?"  He  would  have 
written,  Laisa  kadhalikf,  or  something  similar, 
but  in  speech,  the  language  of  the  street  was  still 
too  strong  for  him.  And  so  it  will  always  be. 
Dead  languages  can  never  be  evoked  to  living 
use,  however  strong  our  spells  or  firm  our  purpose. 
They  will  only  walk  as  ghosts  among  us  and 
blast  and  thwart  our  labours. 

Hear,  then,  the  last  word  on  Muslim  education.  \ 
It  must  learn  to  bring  forth  character,  and  it    \ 

21 


322  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

must  clothe  itself  in  a  speech  understood  of  the 
people.  In  the  past  it  has  never  taken  thought 
for  the  people.  It  has  trained  the  scholar  and  let 
the  masses  go.  With  a  stiff  intellectual  snob- 
bishness it  has  never  seen  that  the  abiding  victories 
of  science  are  won  in  the  primary  school.  And 
so,  even  now,  it  clings  to  a  scholastic  language 
which  bars  the  gates  of  literature  to  ninety  per 
cent  of  the  people.  That  bar  it  must  learn  to 
lift. 


LECTURE  X 

THE  INNER  SIDE   OF   MUSLIM   LIFE— POPULAR 
LITERATURE— A   MISSIONARY'S   READING 

When  we  use  such  a  phrase  as  **the  inner  side 
of  Hfe"  and  apply  it  to  the  MusHm  world,  we  are 
liable  to  commit  the  fundamental  error  of  starting 
with  a  false  idea,  of  taking  hold  of  what,  at  the 
best,  is  a  very  tangled  skein  at  the  wrong  end  of 
the  thread.  Let  me  take  a  moment,  then,  with  this 
phrase,  that  we  may  start  clear  of  confusions 
and  prepossessions.  In  the  first  place,  there  is, 
in  our  sense  of  the  word,  no  inner  side  to  Muslim 
life.  When  we  use  that  phrase,  I  think  that 
our  idea  is  mostly  that  there  are  some  things  which 
are  public,  known,  expected;  things  about  which 
people  in  general  may  and  do  talk  freely; 
and  that,  besides,  there  are  in  life  other  things, 
aspects  and  subjects  about  which  people  do  not 
generally  talk  freely. 

But  for  Muslims,  among  themselves,  the  phrase, 
taken  in  that  sense,  has  no  meaning,  because  that 
distinction,   for  Islam,  does  not  exist.     All  the 

323 


324  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

sides  of  life,  for  the  unreconstructed  Muslim, 
are  equally  discussable,  may  be  talked  out.  There 
are  no  forbidden  subjects  for  conversation;  such 
as  the  subjects  which  with  us  can  be  handled  only 
scientifically,  if  at  all. 

Again,  the  distinction  here  is  not  that  other 
possibility  with  us  of  the  domestic  side  of  life 
as  opposed  to  the  public  side.  The  distinction 
is  a  very  real  one  in  Islam,  although  their 
divisions  fall  somewhat  differently  from  ours. 
f  The  domestic  side  of  Muslim  life  is  shut  to  us; 
but  it  Is  shut  to  other  Muslims  also,  if  not  of 
the  same  family.  But  what  I  mean  by  that 
phrase  is  rather  the  side  of  Muslim  life  which 
it  is  difficult  for  us  to  reach;  that  is  on  the 
inside  so  far  as  we  are  concerned;  to  which  we 
cannot  get  with  ease;  although  for  the  Muslim, 
it  is  just  as  open,  just  as  regular,  public,  dis- 
cussable as  any  other  side.  The  Muslims  will 
enter  upon  those  things  among  Muslims,  his  fel- 
lows, yet  he  will  not  do  it  with  us.  At  least, 
he  will  shrink  from  it  with  us,  because  he  has 
the  idea  that  these  are  subjects  which  we — so  he 
would  say — do  not  really  understand;  we  do  not 
appreciate  all  that  is  involved  in  them;  do  not 


INNER   SIDE    OF    MUSLIM    LIFE  325 

see  them  on  all  their  sides  as  he  does;  and — if 
he  is  to  be  perfectly  candid — we  by  some  absurd 
convention  do  not  speak  of  them  with  the  same 
freedom  as  he  does  himself.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
he  knows  that  there  are  subjects  on  which  our 
ideas  are  different,  and,  therefore,  like  a  child, 
or  like  a  very  wise  person,  he  would  rather  not 
speak  of  them  before  us.  If  he  ever  comes  to 
think  that  we  share  his  opinions  on  such  things, 
the  difficulty  vanishes  at  once,  and  the  investigator 
will,  if  anything,  be  embarrassed  by  the  directness 
of-  speech  and  the  openness  of  discussion  on  which 
he  will  be  launched. 

Of  such  aspects,  such  inward  things,  inacces- 
sible to  us,  one  of  the  most  important  is  the  life 
in  general  of  women  and  children.  Examine,  for 
example,  Lane's  monumental  work  on  the  manners 
and  customs  of  the  modern  Egyptians;  you  find 
there  almost  nothing  really  dealing  with  the 
woman  side  of  Muslim  life  or  with  the  child 
side  of  Muslim  life.  Yet  that  book  stands  in 
the  first  rank  as  a  study  of  a  people.  This  means 
simply  that  Lane,  when  he  wrote  it,  had  not  yet, 
through  the  accidents  of  his  situation,  reached 
those  things.     The  difficulty  in  this  case  is  com- 


326  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

plex.  Partly  it  is  what  I  have  stated  above; 
partly  it  is  that  Muslims  do  not  think  those 
things  worth  noticing  or  speaking  of,  certainly 
not  worth  studying;  partly  it  is  that  they  simply 
do  not  see.  By  familiarity  their  eyes  are  holden. 
And  above,  and  embracing  all  these,  the  woman's 
world  and  the  man's  world  in  the  East  are  two 
separate  things,  each  with  its  stream  of  tradition, 
usages  and  even  language.  The  better  the  East 
is  known,  the  more  this  difference  appears. 

But  when  you  pass  beyond  the  barrier — by 
whatever  means  it  may  be,  through  friendship  or 
marriage  or  otherwise — you  discover  that  there 
is,  on  the  other  side,  an  enormous  amount  to  be 
learned  that  is  of  high  human  interest  and  value; 
the  most  startlingly  curious  parallels  to  life  else- 
where appear,  and  they  are  just  on  that  side  of 
life;  and  yet  it  is  an  exceedingly  hard  thing  for 
the  outside  world  to  reach  them  because  of  the 
limitations  that  are  imposed  upon  social  inter- 
course in  Islam.  Let  me  touch  upon  some  of 
these. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  of  the  things  that 
have  been  discovered  of  late  in  Islam  is  the 
existence    there    of    popular,    folk-lore    tales — 


INNER   SIDE    OF    MUSLIM    LIFE  327 

Mdrchen,  that  is;  we  have  no  exact  word  in 
English — that  are  precisely  the  same  as  those 
current  in  Europe  and,  in  fact,  throughout  the 
world.  We  had  long  imagined  that  the  stories 
that  the  Muslims  had  were  all  of  the  Arabian 
Nights  type;  but  we  have  learned  that  there  is 
this  other  side  of  their  story-world,  and  that  in  it 
is  precisely  the  kind  of  stories  that  you  meet  with 
in  Grimm's  or  Hans  Andersen's  Mdrchen.  And 
not  only  is  the  kind  the  same;  the  stories  are  the 
same. 

For  example,  in  Cairo  I  discovered  a  very 
curious  bit  of  that  kind.  You  remember  the 
story  that  appears  in  German  and  elsewhere  ^ 
about  the  other  children  of  Eve.  The  story,  in 
outline,  is  that  one  time  the  Lord  came  upon 
Eve  when  she  was  washing  and  putting  her  chil- 
dren to  rights,  and  she  had  a  very  great  many 
children — somewhere  in  the  hundreds.  She  had 
got  the  faces  of  only  half  of  them  washed;  only 
half  of  them  were  presentable ;  and  so  she  hurried 
the  rest  of  them  aside,  down  into  a  cave,  and 
showed  only  those  whose  faces  were  clean.     The 

*  No.  180  in  Grimm's  Kinder  und  Haus-Mdrchen;  see, 
too,  Grimm's  notes  and  also  Dahnhardt,  Natursagen,  Vol. 
I,  pp.  246  ff. 


328  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

Lord  said  to  her,  "It  was  very  wrong  of  you, 
Eve,  to  do  that  when  I  was  coming.  I  know 
what  you  have  done.  Because  of  this  your  race 
will  be  in  two  separate  parts.  Those  children  will 
stay  there;  they  will  live  and  continue  beneath 
the  earth;  the  rest  will  live  above  the  earth. 
From  this  time  forth,  you  will  have  two  races  of 
descendents."  And  so  there  are  still  two  races — 
we,  the  children  who  had  the  happiness  to  get 
our  faces  washed  in  time,  and  the  other  race — 
our  sisters,  our  brothers — who  still  live  and  have 
their  being  down  underneath  the  earth,  and  who 
know  that  they  are  akin  to  us,  although  we  know 
nothing  about  them. 

That  is  the  tale  which  you  meet  in  European 
folk-lore.  What  astonished  me  was  to  find 
exactly  the  same  story  in  Cairo,  although  there 
it  is  told  only  amongst  women  and  children. 
I  have  never  read  it  in  Arabic;  I  do  not  believe 
it  is  in  writing  or  in  print  in  Arabic.  It  is  some- 
thing that  passes  from  mothers  to  their  children 
and  only  in  that  way. 

Again,  in  the  Island  of  R5da  which  lies  in  the 
Nile  opposite  to  Old  Masr  and  is  the  only  one 
of  the  Nile  islands  that  was  there  in  old  times. 


INNER   SIDE    OF    MUSLIM    LIFE  329 

there  stands  a  very  large  and  old  lotus  tree.  It 
is  gnarled,  bent,  twisted,  grown  in  all  directions 
into  a  tangle  of  branches  and  is  simply  covered 
with  little  scraps  of  coloured  cloth  and  with  little 
flags.  It  looks,  in  fact,  like  a  very  disreputable 
wash  hung  out  to  dry.  If  you  ask  any  one  what 
that  tree  is,  he  will,  if  a  man,  first  of  all  look 
embarrassed.  He  does  not  like  to  talk  about  it; 
but  if  you  ask  again,  he  will  say,  ''Oh,  that  is 
the  Lady  Mandura."  Notice,  it  is  the  tree  that 
Is  the  lady.  It  is  not  that  some  saint  has  been 
buried  there,  or  anything  of  that  kind;  it  is  the 
tree  itself.  You  have  a  fragment  of  tree-worship, 
of  the  oldest,  the  most  primitive  superstition, 
and  still  surviving  in  vigorous  life.  The  details 
of  use  connected  with  this  tree  a  man  will  hardly 
tell  you,  or,  if  he  does,  he  will  do  it  in  a  very 
shame-faced  way.  But  if  you  get  the  right 
source — a  child  by  preference — you  will  learn  that 
when  a  child  is  very  sick,  its  mother  will  bring 
it  to  this  tree,  tie  a  bright  coloured  rag  on  the 
tree,  and  the  child  will  put  its  hand  on  the  tree. 
Others  say  that  the  old  bandage  from  a  hurt  must 
be  tied  to  the  tree  and  two  leaves  from  the  tree 
must  be  bound  into  the  new  bandage  which  takes 


330  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

its  place.  The  child  is  then  taken  away  again 
and  will  surely  get  better.  The  Lady  Mandura 
will  take  care  of  that.  But  within  a  year  it  must 
come  back  and  pay  its  thanks  to  her,  or  else  very 
soon  she  will  send  a  scorpion  to  sting  it.  The 
Lady  Mandura  will  take  care  of  that  also.  Such 
is  another  scrap  from  the  woman's  world  that 
you  can  pick  up,  if  you  only  know  how.^ 

Again  another  example;  and  this  one  is  a 
great  deal  more  astonishing.  Within  only  a  com- 
paratively short  period  of  years — quite  easily 
within  thirty  years,  I  should  say — we  have  come 
to  know  that  practically  all  through  the  Muslim 
world  there  is  spread  an  observance  exactly  like 
the  Black  Mass  in  Christendom.  That  is  to  say, 
it  is  a  profane  parody  of  a  sacred  service.  Among 
the  older  travellers  you  will  find  no  reference  to 
this.  Lane  apparently  knew  nothing  of  it,  nor 
did  even  Burton,  in  spite  of  his  curious  knowledge 
of  the  most  out  of  the  way  and  disrespectable 

*0n  sacred  trees  in  the  Semitic  world  cf.  S.  I.  Curtiss, 
Primitive  Semitic  Religion  To-day,  pp.  90  ff.  and  Gold- 
ziher's  Muhammedanische  Studien,  II,  349  ff.  For  further 
details  on  this  particular  tree,  see  Madame  Ruchdi  Pacha's 
Harems  et  Musulmanes  d'Egypte,  pp.  331  ff.,  an  admirable 
study  of  Egyptian  life  which  should  be  read  carefully. 


INNER   SIDE   OF   MUSLIM    LIFE  33I 

sides  of  Islam.  What  it  travesties  is  the  darwish 
zikr.  I  described  to  you  at  some  length  the 
method  of  holding  a  zikr;  how  by  reciting  in 
rapid  cadence  and  with  physical  movements  and 
breathings,  such  religious  phrases  as  the  confes- 
sion of  faith,  doxologies,  pious  ejaculations,  dar- 
wishes  work  themselves  up  into  a  steady  religious 
frenzy,  or  else  cast  themselves  into  a  hypnotic 
coma. 

Now,  practically  throughout  all  Islam  there  is 
a  kind  of  parody  of  this,  in  which  the  beings 
whose  intervention  is  sought  are  what  we  would 
broadly  call  devils.  Yet  when  we  speak  of  Mus- 
lim devils,  we  must  always  remember  their  non- 
descript character  and  that  they  are  continually 
confused  with  the  jinn,  and  so  come  to  be  on  a 
dividing  line  between  fairies,  brownies,  kobolds 
and  true  theological  devils.  Devil-worship,  then, 
in  Islam  and  in  Christendom  are  two  quite  dif- 
ferent things.  In  Islam  there  is  no  precise  feeling 
of  rejection  of  Aljah  and  of  blasphemy  against 
his  name.  It  is,  rather,  akin  to  the  old  Arab 
^'taking  refuge  with  the  jinn"  (Qur.  Ixxii,  6), 
denounced,  it  is  true,  by  Muhammad  as  a  minor 
polytheism,  but  compatible  with  acceptance  and 


^^2  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

worship  of  Allah.  Perhaps  it  might  be  described 
most  exactly  as  a  kind  of  perverted  saint-worship. 
But  its  form  is  certainly  a  parody  of  the  j^ikr, 
though  with  curious  additions  of  bloody  sacrifice, 
due  to  its  African  Voodoo  origin.  I  do  not  mean 
by  this  to  suggest  that  it  is  descended  from  the 
old  Arab  "taking  refuge  with  the  jinn."  It  was 
certainly  introduced  by  negroes,  and  it  is  carried 
on  under  the  direction  and  personal  control  of 
negro  women.  Yet  it  has  spread  all  over  the 
Muslim  world.  You  meet  It  throughout  North 
Africa,  In  Arabia  and  in  Turkey  itself. 

This  observance  and  ritual  is  called  Zdr,  an 
Abyssinian  word,  used  in  Arabia  for  the  names 
of  the  spirits  whose  aid  is  Invoked.  The  word 
is  very  broad  and  obscure  In  its  application,  being, 
as  I  have  said,  of  foreign  origin  and  introduced 
with  the  thing  Itself  by  African  female  slaves. 
Thirty  years  ago  nothing  was  known  of  it  in 
Europe,  and  it  is  only  within  a  comparatively 
short  time  that  we  have  really  come  to  any  precise 
knowledge  upon  it.  Of  course,  the  reason  Is 
intelligible  enough.  This  kind  of  devil-worship  is 
carried  on  by  women  only.  Men  are  never  sup- 
posed to  see  it,  and  only  by  the  rare  chance  and 


INNER    SIDE    OF    MUSLIM    LIFE  333 

possibility  of  an  intelligent  woman  taking  part 
in  it  could  the  knowledge  of  it  come  to  us  in  the 
West.  In  this  case  the  fullest  description  of  it 
which  I  know  is  in  the  book  of  Madame  Ruchdi 
Pacha  to  which  I  have  already  referred  and  to 
which  I  must  again  refer  for  details.  But  it, 
in  short,  is  strictly  a  combination,  on  one  side, 
of  Voodoo  worship,  with  its  hysterics,  posses- 
sions, incensings,  incantations  and  bloody  sacri- 
fices— all  for  the  benefit  and  to  amuse  and  turn 
aside  the  anger  of  a  world  of  disease-causing 
spirits — and,  on  another  side,  of  certain  forms 
and  phrases  of  more  strictly  Muslim  religion 
and  superstition.  It  has  its  regular  professional 
practitioners  whose  destructive  influence  on  family 
unity  and  health  is  much  that  of  "Christian"  and 
"Mental  Science"  operators  with  us.  While  in 
Cairo,  I  picked  up  by  accident  a  tiny  pamphlet 
of  some  eighty  odd  pages,  dealing  with  the  Zdr  on 
this  side.  The  greater  part  of  it — it  is  in  Arabic 
of  course — is  devoted  to  a  little  story  of  family 
life  very  simply  told,  describing  the  disruption 
of  the  family  and  finally  the  death  of  the  mother 
through  her  blind  devotion  to  a  Kudiya,  as  the 
shaykha  or  priestess  of  Zar  is  called.     Then  fol- 


334  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

lows  a  collection  of  incantations  and  prayers  used 
in  the  Zdrs.  But  the  story  is  the  main  thing 
and  shows  us  a  side  of  Muslim  life  that  is 
especially  hard  for  us  to  reach,  yet  one  with 
which  the  woman  missionary  should,  of  all  people, 
be  familiar.^ 

Another  side,  kindred  but  still  distinct,  is  that 
which  you  might  vaguely  describe  as  superstitions. 
It  is  easier  to  reach  Muslim  superstitions  than 
it  is  to  reach  the  woman  or  the  child  side  of  life; 
but  still  it  is  not  very  easy  even  at  that. 

For  example,  it  has  been  well  known  for  a 
great  many  years — I  believe  that,  in  this  case, 
it  was  Lane  who  first  dealt  with  the  matter  in 
his  book — that  in  Egypt  there  is  a  class  of  magi- 
cians who  profess  to  be  able  to  discover  the  truth 
as  to  past  events,  to  tell  what  is  happening  at 
a  distance,  and  to  foretell  the  future,  by  the  use 
of  what  is  called  the  ink-mirror  or  the  magic 
mirror.  For  this  a  boy  about  eight  or  nine  years 
old  is  needed.  The  magician  takes  the  boy's 
right  hand,  draws  in  ink  upon  the  palm  of  it  a 

*  Further  references  for  the  Zar  are  the  Zeifschrift  of 
the  German  Oriental  Society,  XLIV,  480  and  701  and 
XLV,  343;  also  Snouck  Hurgronje,  Mekka,  II,  124  ff. 


INNER    SIDE    OF    MUSLIM    LIFE  335 

magic  square  of  a  very  simple  character — usually 
a  square  of  nine  divisions — and  in  the  middle 
of  it  puts  a  globule  of  ink.  The  boy  has,  then, 
to  gaze  intently  into  it,  while  the  magician  keeps 
muttering  Qur'anic  passages  and  incantations  and 
burns  incense  of  different  kinds.  He  then  asks 
the  boy  if  he  sees  anything.  The  boy  almost 
always  does  see  something  and  is  thereupon  put 
through  a  series  of  fixed  questionings — does  he 
see  this  and  does  he  see  that  ? — until  the  boy  sees 
pictures  easily  in  the  ink-globule  and  gradually 
comes  to  objectify  in  such  pictures  any  ideas  which 
may  pass  into  his  brain.  The  boy  is  led,  that  is, 
through  the  practice  of  a  stereotyped  string  of 
questions  until  the  thoughts  in  the  minds  of  those 
in  the  company  pass  into  his  mind  and  are  objecti- 
fied in  the  mirror  of  the  drop  of  ink. 

Now  we  know  as  a  matter  of  fact  that  telepathy 
or  thought-transference  is  as  well  proven  as  any- 
thing, non-physical,  can  be,  and  also  that  the 
thought  transferred  may  be  objectified  in  a  picture 
by  the  person  to  whom  the  thought  is  passed.  In 
consequence,  then.  If  any  one  in  that  circle  round 
the  boy  knows  the  thing  which  the  boy  has  to  see, 
the  idea  will  be  transferred  to  the  boy's  mind 


^2^  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

and  he  will  see  it  as  a  picture,  whatever  it  is  to 
be,  figure,  face,  event;  whatever  is  called  for  he 
will  see  in  that  little  drop  of  ink. 

Such  a  scene  Lane  described  very  many  years 
ago;  such  methods  the  magicians  of  Cairo  used 
in  his  time.  When  I  was  in  Cairo  I  made  many 
attempts  to  find  a  magician;  but  I  had  absolutely 
no  success  and  for  a  very  curious  reason.  In 
Lane's  time  the  method  was  a  secret,  the  property 
of  individuals  who  passed  down  traditionally  the 
knowledge  of  how  to  carry  it  out.  It  had  been 
discovered,  I  suppose,  by  some  peculiar  accident 
and  had,  then,  fallen  into  the  hands  of  profes- 
sional magicians.  But  since  Lane's  time  a  great 
many  books  upon  magic  have  been  printed  in 
Cairo,  and  the  full  descriptions  of  how  to  carry 
out  these  operations  have  appeared  in  those  books ; 
consequently,  the  professional  magician's  chances 
are  gone,  and  he  himself  has  almost  entirely 
vanished. 

For  example,  the  head  of  the  training  college 
for  teachers  in  Cairo,  an  Englishman,  told  me 
that  one  of  his  students  had  described  to  him 
how,  when  he  was  a  boy  in  a  village  in  the 
country,  the  governor  of  that  district  used  him 


INNER    SIDE    OF    MUSLIM    LIFE  2>2>7 

for  this  purpose  when  anybody's  cow  had  been 
stolen  or  when  anything  at  all  had  gone  amissing. 
It  was  a  perfectly  normal  and  regular  way  of 
identifying  thieves. 

Later,  in  Jerusalem,  I  heard  of  a  more  recent 
case.  Something  was  stolen  from  the  house  of 
an  Englishman  there,  and  there  was  a  great  deal 
of  trouble  made  over  it.  The  things  were  valu- 
able, and  the  owner  was  not  content  to  let  the 
matter  rest  in  the  easy  oriental  fashion.  At  last 
the  governor  of  Jerusalem,  a  very  high  Turkish 
official,  was  stirred  to  action,  went  to  the  house, 
got  hold  of  a  boy,  and  put  him  through  this 
process  to  find  out  who  the  thief  could  be.  But 
the  people  of  the  house  had  a  perfectly  fixed  idea 
as  to  who  the  thief  was,  and,  sure  enough,  it  was 
that  face  which  appeared  in  the  mirror.  Very 
shortly  afterwards,  however,  it  was  discovered 
that  it  was  quite  impossible  that  that  man  could 
have  been  the  thief.  Scientifically,  of  course,  it 
was  only  the  fact  that  he  was  thoroughly  believed 
to  be  the  thief  that  made  his  form  appear;  the 
concerted  thoughts  of  the  crowd  surrounding  the 
boy  passed  into  his  brain  and  showed  themselves 
to  him  In  a  picture. 


338  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

I  give  these  as  illustrations  of  how  deeply  this 
idea  is  rooted  in  the  Muslim  mind,  and  also  of 
the  difficulty,  for  us,  of  getting  at  it.  When  in 
Cairo  I  brought  together  quite  a  little  library  of 
books  on  magic,  and  if  I  had  looked  at  these  as 
carefully  as  I  ought  to  have  done,  I  would  have 
found  in  more  than  one  the  name  and  address  of  a 
professional  magician.  But,  though  I  asked  right 
and  left,  and  tried  to  find  one  by  all  the  means 
in  my  power — wishing  to  get  in  touch  with  the 
living  practice,  as  well  as  the  literary  tradition 
of  the  subject — I  could  never  hear  of  any.  It 
is  only  since  I  have  been  back  here  in  Hartford 
that  I  have  found  these  references  that,  on  the 
spot,  might  have  been  so  useful. 

Besides  this  there  are  certain  other  methods 
of  discovering  the  future,  about  which  the  Mus- 
lims are  willing  to  talk.  One  of  my  teachers  in 
Cairo,  for  example,  evidently  himself  believed 
quite  firmly  in  a  process  by  which  you  take  the 
numerical  values  of  letters,  add  them  up,  put 
them  through  dififerent  arithmetical  combinations 
and  get  some  result  or  other,  and  he  rather  liked 
to  show  me  how  this  was  done.  He  would  say 
at  the  same  time  of  course,  "None  knoweth  the 


INNER    SIDE    OF    MUSLIM    LIFE  339 

truth  save  Allah,"  and  shrug  his  shoulders.  But 
it  was  plain  that,  for  him,  there  was  something 
in  it.  Of  others  I  heard,  men  of  high  rank  and 
supposed  education,  who  spent  their  odds  and  ends 
of  time  making  such  computations.  On  one  of 
these,  a  Pasha,  I  was  taken  to  call  but  unfortu- 
nately missed  him,  and  before  I  could  call  again, 
he  died.  "He  knows  all  about  it  now,"  was  the 
philosophical  remark  of  our  common  friend. 
Such  methods  and  ideas,  then,  you  meet  every- 
where; but  beyond  a  certain  simple  stage  it  is 
hard  to  pass.  The  high  magic  is  another  thing 
from  amateurism. 

Here  is  another  illustration  of  the  silence  which 
generally  lies  over  such  things.  I  presume  that 
eighty-five  per  cent  at  least  of  the  native  popula- 
tion of  Cairo  believes  quite  fixedly  in  the  jinn, 
the  genii  of  our  Arabian  Nights.  Yet  it  is  a 
very  hard  thing  to  get  them  to  talk  about  these 
jinn.  Only  accidentally,  almost  inadvertently, 
can  you  learn  what  their  ideas  really  are.  For 
example,  M.  Maspero,  the  curator  of  the  great 
museum  at  Cairo,  told  me  how  by  long,  patient 
handling  he  had  brought  some  of  his  native, 
employees  to  talk  freely  with  him  on  such  matters 


340  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

and,  especially,  to  tell  their  folk-tales  before  him. 
But  once,  unfortunately,  a  European  lady  in  his 
company  laughed  and  the  spell  was  broken  from 
that  time  on.  The  fear  of  ridicule  immediately 
appeared,  confidence  was  destroyed,  and  he  got 
no  more  Mdrchen  from  them. 

But  on  another  occasion,  in  the  most  casual 
way,  one  of  their  beliefs  suddenly  showed  itself. 
In  connection  with  the  museum  there  was  a  small 
steam  engine,  and  in  time  it  had  to  be  replaced 
by  another.  The  same  engineer  was  put  in  charge 
of  the  new  engine  that  had  been  in  charge  of  the 
first.  But  he  was  not  satisfied  with  his  success 
In  dealing  with  it.  In  his  own  words,  ''1  cannot 
get  on  with  this  new  efrtt" — one  of  the  Arabic 
words  for  spirit,  ghost,  devil — "I  cannot  learn  his 
ways  and  he  does  not  seem  to  like  me."  And 
he  went  on  to  explain,  "I  have  put  Into  the  furnace 
a  package  of  the  very  best  cigarettes ;  but  I  do  not 
seem  to  be  able  to  get  on  good  terms  with  him." 
It  was  perfectly  plain  that  he  had  no  question  in 
his  mind  that  the  motive  power  of  this  engine 
was  a  spirit  of  some  kind  whom  these  Westerners 
by  their  spells  had  imprisoned  within  it  and 
whose  duty  it  was  to  do  the  work.     His  business, 


INNER   SIDE   OF   MUSLIM    LIFE  34I 

on  the  other  hand,  was  to  make  himself  agreeable 
to  this  spirit  in  order  to  get  the  best  work  out 
of  him ;  and  he  had  not  succeeded. 

Again,  in  this  same  Egyptian  museum  there 
is  about  the  largest  collection  of  ghosts  that  exists 
anywhere  in  this  world,  and  not  one  of  the  native 
staff  will  ever  enter  after  nightfall  on  any  account 
whatever.  It  is  supposed  to  be  haunted  by  the 
spirits  of  all  the  old  Egyptian  statues,  figures, 
mummies,  that  have  been  brought  In  and  put  there. 
In  part  they  are  the  spirits  of  the  Egyptians  whose 
mummies  are  there,  and  In  part  they  are  jinn  who 
have  taken  up  their  abode  in  the  statues.  As  for 
M.  Maspero  himself,  he  is  a  very  powerful  magi- 
cian, powerful  enough  to  control  them,  and  he 
keeps  them  shut  tightly  in  the  statues  and  mummy 
cases  all  day.  But  when  night  falls,  it  is  a  dif- 
ferent thing  entirely,  and,  if  by  any  chance,  on 
account  of  visitors  or  anything  of  the  kind,  the 
museum  is  to  be  entered  at  night,  those  who  enter 
are  sure  to  see  and  hear  mysterious  things,  and 
nothing  can  convince  the  natives  that  these  sights 
and  sounds  are  not  produced  by  the  jinn,  scurry- 
ing back  Into  their  shelters. 

To  the  endless  subject  of  talismans  I  can  make 


342  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

no  more  than  an  allusion.  All  in  the  East  carry 
them,  from  donkey-boys — and  their  donkeys — to 
theologians,  and  they  vary  in  complexity  from 
a  dirty,  rolled  up  scrap  of  paper  with  some  sacred 
names  or  Qur'an  verses  scrawled  on  it,  to  elabor- 
ately engraved  gems.  From  Damascus  I  brought 
back  a  little  oval  silver  plate,  intended  to  be  car- 
ried hanging  around  the  neck  but,  of  course,  con- 
cealed under  the  clothes.  On  one  side  is  a  magic 
square  made  up  of  certain  sacred  but  unintelligible 
letters  which  stand  at  the  head  of  some  chapters 
of  the  Qur'an,  and  on  the  other  are  the  names 
of  the  Seven  Sleepers  and  their  dog,  so  written  as 
to  weave  together  into  a  seal  of  Solomon.  The 
magic  square,  I  may  add,  in  forms  of  greater  or 
less  complexity  plays  a  part  in  all  Muslim  magic. 
But  I  do  not  remember  ever  to  have  met  with  a 
magic  cube,  and  in  handling  the  magic  square 
errors  of  calculation  are  of  constant  occurrence. 
It  seems  certain  that  It  was  derived  bv  the  Mus- 
lims  from  some  more  arithmetical  people.  By 
that  its  mystery  and  importance  is  only  the  more 
increased. 

It  is  needless  to  say  that  this  side  of  the  East 
could  be  developed  at  great  length;  but  the  point 


INNER    SIDE    OF    MUSLIM    LIFE  343 

which  I  wish  to  make  is  that  while  to  a  certain 
extent  it  is  comparatively  easy  to  learn  about  such 
matters,  there 'is  a  limit  beyond  which,  from  the 
fear  they  have  that  you  may  laugh  at  them  and 
will  not  understand  them,  you  cannot  pass.  This 
is  the  only  explanation,  the  only  excuse  that  I 
can  find  for  the  general  ignorance  of  the  West- 
erner, resident  in  the  East,  upon  these  things. 
When  I  went  up  from  Egypt  to  Jerusalem, 
I  had  become  interested  in  such  investigations, 
and  I  tried  to  discover  by  enquiry  whether  in 
Syria  there  was  as  much  magic  as  in  Egypt, 
and  whether  the  ideas  upon  it  were  of  the  same 
kind  there.  For  a  long  time  I  could  learn 
nothing.  One  missionary  after  another  who  had 
been  years  in  the  country  would  tell  me,  **No, 
we  never  hear  of  anything  of  the  kind  here; 
Egypt  is  the  only  place  where  they  have  such 
ideas;  in  Syria  there  Is  no  magic."  But,  shortly 
after  I  had  been  told  this  most  positively  by  one 
missionary,  on  going  down  the  street  In  Jerusalem 
which  Is  absurdly  called  "the  street  of  David," 
I  saw  a  man  sitting  with  his  back  against  the  wall 
and  his  little  bit  of  cloth  spread  out,  a  patch  of 
sand  upon  It,  waiting  for  people  to  come  to  whom 


344  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

he  could  divine  and  foretell  the  future.  This 
method  of  divination  by  making  little  strokes  and 
dots  in  sand  and  with  them  building  up  figures 
each  of  which  has  then  its  own  meaning,  is  one 
of  the  commonest,  and  ranges  in  complexity  from 
a  simple  yes  or  no  by  odds  and  evens  to  elaborate 
astrological  calculations.  Again,  shortly  there- 
after, through  another  and  a  better  informant,  I 
heard  the  tale  that  I  have  already  told  you  about 
how  the  governor  of  Jerusalem  tried  by  the  magic 
mirror  to  discover  a  thief.  I  had  been  told 
before,  again  and  again,  that  no  such  thing  had 
ever  been  heard  of  in  Palestine.  The  moral  Is 
that  which  I  tried  to  emphasize  in  my  first 
lecture,  that  you  must  believe  nothing  until 
you  have  tested  it  at  the  mouths  of  many 
and  multifarious  witnesses.  Above  all,  go  and 
see  for  yourself. 

Another  side  of  Muslim  life  which  Is  very 
hard  to  reach  is  what  you  might  call  that  of 
religious  feeling.  I  do  not  mean  dogma;  it  is 
not  by  any  means  difficult  to  get  them  to  talk 
theology  in  the  strict  sense.  Nor  do  I  mean  rites 
and  religious  usages.  But  the  thing  that  is  dif- 
ficult to  reach  is  what  the  Muslim  feels  in  his 


INNER    SIDE    OF    MUSLIM    LIFE  345 

religious  exercises.     What  does  he,   personally, 
"get  out  of  them? 

The  dominant  feeling  connected  with  the  five 
daily  prayers  is  probably  that  of  a  prescribed 
religious  duty  being  duly  performed.  The  theo- 
logians themselves  are  a  good  deal  puzzled  as  to 
the  meaning  of  their  details.  Indeed,  one  of 
them,  and  one  of  the  greatest,  takes  up  an  abso- 
lutely agnostic  position  and  teaches  that  in  these 
details  are  certain  secrets  which  we  cannot  know 
but  which  are  a  medicine  for  the  soul,  like  the 
medicines  for  the  body  which  physicians  prescribe 
and  which  the  patient  must  take  blindly.  The 
religious  performances  left,  then,  are  the  sikrs 
of  darwishes  and  those  cantatas  of  the  birth 
of  the  Prophet,  etc.,  rendered  by  professional  musi- 
cians on  occasions  of  rejoicing  such  as  a  marriage. 
As  for  the  cantatas,  I  suspect  that  the  effect  upon 
the  audience  Is  mostly  esthetic.  Their  subjects 
are  religious  only  because  everything  In  Islam  is 
struck  with  religion  in  a  sense  and  to  a  degree. 

The  2ikrs,  which  are  more  to  our  present  pur- 
pose, I  have  already  attempted  to  analyze.  I 
repeat  here  my  final  conclusion  that  their  attraction 
lies  greatly  in  the  pleasure  of  the  dreamy  semi- 


34^  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

hypnotic  state  and  in  the  possibiHty  of  auto- 
hypnosis  which  they  contain.  As  for  general 
reHgious  walk  and  conversation,  the  freque^nt 
ejaculation  of  Allah!  may  not  necessarily  mean 
anything  more  than  the  Dame!  of  the  French, 
or  our  Good  Lord!  but,  broadly,  there  can  be  no 
\  question  that  the  Muslim  lives  in  more  constant 
consciousness  of  the  unseen  world  than  we  do; 
a  very  thin  shell,  as  I  have  elsewhere  put  it,^ 
separates  him  from  that  world.  This  may  not 
mean  much  for  what  we  would  call  true  religion 
and  undefiled;  it  may  run  to  nothing  but  an 
absolute  lack  of  feeling  for  natural  law  and  an 
inclination  towards  the  crassest  superstition.  But 
it  may  also  mean  a  continuous  walk  with  God, 
even  though  with  ideas  of  the  will  of  God  which 
are  strangely  perplexed  and  wrong.  It  is  never 
easy  to  sound  the  depths  of  that  most  intimate 
religious  feeling,  and  I  have  to  confess  that  I 
am  still,  to  this  day,  uncertain  as  to  the  way 
and  the  degree  in  which  the  religious  feeling  is 
moved  in  those  people.  We  must  always  remem- 
ber that  we  ourselves  are  exceedingly  chary  of 

^The  Religious  Attitude  and  Life  in  Islam,  pp.  8ff. ;  the 
whole  book  bears  upon  this  question. 


INNER   SIDE  OF    MUSLIM   LIFE  34/ 

showing,  at  least  to  the  unbeHever,  this  innermost 
side  of  all.  I  found  that  amongst  darwishes 
such  contact  was  most  possible.  They  were  more 
ready  to  talk  about  their  emotional  religious  life. 
But,  in  general,  it  need  hardly  be  said,  any  inves- 
tigator will  need  here  to  move  with  the  greatest 
tact  and  sympathy. 

Another  side  on  which  it  is  easy  to  go  a  certain 
distance  but  very  difficult  to  reach  the  real  root 
of  the  matter  is  the  feeling  of  Muslims  about 
saints.  It  became  perfectly  clear  to  me  when 
I  was  on  the  spot — had  been  clear,  I  might  say, 
before  I  went  to  the  East  through  my  reading  in 
Muslim  hagiology — that  there  must  be  an  enor- 
mous amount  of  hypnotism  and  telepathy  con- 
nected with  the  miracles  of  the  saints  and  with 
the  strange  things  that  happen  to  them.  That 
prepared  me  to  believe  that  there  was  a  basis  of 
truth  in  these  marvels,  but  did  not  teach  me  how 
to  learn  the  views  and  attitudes  of  the  people 
themselves.  These  views  might  be  very  different 
from  those  of  learned  hagiologists.  And  there 
was  on  the  threshold  one  especial  difficulty.  Mus- 
lims— in  fact  all  Orientals — have  made  up  their 
minds  very  thoroughly  that  we  Westerners  are 


348  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

SO  entirely  godless  and  so  given  over  to  material 
things  that  we  have  no  mind  for  the  things  of 
the  unseen  world.  We  have  not  the  aptitude 
nor  even  the  inclination  to  understand  such 
things,  and  therefore  they  will  not  talk  about 
them  to  us. 

It  was  only  by  my  very  great  fortune  that  I 
became  acquainted  with  a  thoroughly  trustworthy 
convert  to  Christianity  from  Islam — I  have 
already  spoken  of  him  in  a  former  lecture — who 
had  been  a  darwish  and  had  passed  through 
some  very  remarkable  experiences  of  his  own. 
Through  him  I  was  able  to  get  into  first  hand 
touch  with  this  strange  world.  He,  now  being 
a  Christian,  was  prepared  to  tell  me  what  had 
been  his  experiences  as  a  darwish,  and  to  develop 
for  me  the  whole  subject.  In  fact,  I  think  he 
rather  liked  to  enter  upon  it  because  it  was  a  diffi- 
cult one  for  him  himself.  He  had  been  a  Muslim ; 
he  had  had  strange  spiritual  experiences  then; 
now  he  had  become  a  Christian.  What  did  this 
mean  for  the  faith  of  Islam?  Did  It  mean  that 
there  was  truth  in  Islam?  Did  it  mean  that  its 
saints,  those  darwishes  who  had  reached  saint- 
hood, were  true  saints?     How  was  he  to  regard 


INNER   SIDE  OF    MUSLIM   LIFE  349 

those  experiences  which,  for  him,  were  evidently 
fixed  facts?  Of  them  he  had  no  question.  So 
he  was  rather  glad,  as  it  seemed  to  me,  to  talk 
them  over  with  me,  because  I  was  able  to  bring 
out  to  him  the  fact  that  such  things  as  these 
appeared  everywhere  in  the  world  and  belonged 
to  all  religions  and  were  not  essentially  part  of 
any  one  religion  alone;  that  they  might  happen 
to  any  one  whose  mind  was  turned  in  such  a 
direction  under  similar  conditions. 

Another  side  of  Muslim  life  that  is  hard  to  reach 
is  a  real  understanding  of  their  feeling  towards 
history  as  opposed  to  mere  stories.  What,  in  a 
word,  is  their  sense  of  historical  fact  ?  Of  course, 
it  is  well  known  that  what  the  dragoman  of  the 
East  tells  you  is  not  to  be  believed;  but  I  dis- 
covered that,  with  discretion,  one  could  get  a 
great  deal  out  of  a  donkey-boy.  He  is  not  so 
sophisticated.  He  does  not  in  general  make  up 
things  for  your  especial  edification.  The  chances 
are  that  he  will  talk  out  just  what  he  thinks. 
And  so  I  found  that  I  never  really  got  behind  the 
mind  of  the  average  Muslim  with  regard  to  the 
distinction,  or  rather  the  relation,  between  stories 
and  history  until,  in  riding  over  the  Mukattam 


350  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

hills  and  in  visiting  mosques,  I  got  my  donkey-boy 
to  tell  me  who  built  this  mosque  and  who  was 
buried  in  that,  etc.,  upon  which  he  told  me  the 
most  extraordinary  things.  In  part  it  was 
history,  the  names,  at  least,  were  derived  from 
history;  but  directly  it  was  derived  from  popular 
romances,  the  historical  novels  of  the  people. 
I  knew  and  had  read  them  as  romances,  mostly 
of  crusading  times,  but  for  my  donkey-boy  and 
for  the  masses  of  Cairo  the  two  are  inextricably 
mixed,  or  rather,  these  romances  are  for  them 
sober  narrations  of  fact.  "History"  and  "story" 
are  not  yet  separated,  and  every  tale  is  told  as 
a  thing  which  has  happened.  So  far  has  the 
Semitic  mind  always  been  from  the  la-TopCt]  of 
Herodotus !  Only  in  this  way,  then,  and  by  this 
means  did  I  at  last  get  a  clear  view  of  how  the 
masses  of  Islam  take  history,  and  how  it  is  that 
it  is  so  easy  in  Islam  for  history  to  become  mixed 
with  legend. 

But  here  the  printing  press  is  relieving  us  of 
the  necessity  of  trusting  the  ideas  and  veracity  of 
the  donkey-boy.  In  Cairo  there  is  being  printed 
a  great  store  of  little  booklets  containing  exactly 
those    same    things — stories,    histories,    legends, 


INNER    SIDE   OF    MUSLIM    LIFE  35 1 

popular  poems,  very  many  of  them  cast  in  the 
colloquial  dialect  and  evidently  intended  to  be 
read  by  the  people  and  not  by  the  student.  By 
reading  these  you  do  get  a  little  way  back  into 
corners  of  the  Muslim  mind  and  life  otherwise 
pretty  nearly  inaccessible,  for  the  Muslim  is  very 
fond  of  stories.  Thus,  I  shall  not  forget  how, 
in  the  great  mosque  of  al-Mu'ayyad,  one  of  the 
holiest  places  in  Cairo,  I  came  upon  a  boy,  a  col- 
lege boy  I  afterwards  discovered,  a  student  at 
the  Azhar,  diligently  occupied  in  reading  the 
Arabian  Nights,  or,  rather,  one  of  the  stories 
of  the  Nights  in  a  separate  little  pamphlet.  I 
went  up  to  him  and  asked  with  some  severity 
of  countenance,  "Is  that  the  Holy  Qur'an  you 
are  reading?"  Whereupon  his  companions  rolled 
over  in  laughter.  It  was  evidently  a  joke  of  the 
finest  that  an  unbeliever  should  catch  a  believer 
occupied  in  that  way  in  the  mosque. 

Then,  last,  there  is  a  side  of  the  Muslim  mind 
which  is  not  so  difficult  to  reach  as  to  handle, 
but  with  which  I  must  deal.  It  is  too  important 
to  be  left  out.  The  best  rubric  under  which  to 
bring  it,  although  it  is  a  poor  description,  is  to 
call  it  the  erotic.     But  here,  as -ever  in  the  East, 


352 


ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 


we   must   distinguish.     There   is   a   calmness,    a 
matter-of-factness,    a    directness    about    oriental 
eroticism  which  separates  it  entirely   from  that 
of  at  least  modern  Europe.     The  innuendo  of  the 
French  pornographic  novel  is  lacking,  while  there 
is  present  an  exactitude  and  breadth  of  description 
and  narrative  that  no  European  writer  has  ever 
attempted.     This  has  to  itself  a  department  of 
literature  in  Arabic,  one  recognized  in  the  native 
bibliographies.     But    on    one    side,    these    books 
should   never    be    confused   with    the    books    in 
European  literature  which  booksellers  call  ''curi- 
ous," and,  on  another,  they  are  only  a  special- 
ization or  localization  of  what  is  scattered  through 
all  Arabic  literature.     It  is  to  be  found  in  books 
of   law,   theology  and   of   the  religious   life;   it 
appears    in    historians,    biographers    and    geog- 
raphers; it  is  especially  prominent  in  books  on 
magic  and  medicine;  and  is  present  In  varying 
degrees  in  all  forms  of  higher  literature,  from 
treatises   on  esthetics  and  bellettristic  essays  to 
farcical  stories.     It  is  thus  an  element  In  the  East 
with  which  every  student  of  the  East  must  reckon. 
If   he  studies  his   subject   carefully,    he  cannot 
escape  it,  nor  should  he  seek  to  minimize  or  disre- 


INNER   SIDE  OF    MUSLIM   LIFE  353 

gard  it.  It  is  an  essential  part  of  the  picture 
before  him  and  cannot  safely  be  left  out,  as  can 
the  similar  element  in  Europe. 

But,  as  I  have  said,  this  phase  of  Eastern  life 
and  literature  has  also  found  expression  in  a 
special  class  of  books.  These  might  be  described 
roughly  as  a  compound  of  our  books  on  domestic 
medicine — particularly  their  more  domestic  por- 
tions, books  on  cosmetics  and  the  like,  self  and 
sex  books  even  to  the  moralizings,  essays  in  praise 
and  blame  of  women,  the  smuttier  jests  of  old- 
fashioned  journalism  and  the  more  outrageous 
parts  of  the  Arabian  Nights.  Mix  these  together, 
raise  the  essential  characteristic  to  the  n*^'  power 
and  you  have  this  class  of  Muslim  literature.  Of 
course,  the  proportion  of  the  elements  varies  in 
each.  In  one,  the  bellettristic  and  esthetic  treat- 
ment may  predominate;  in  another,  the  medical; 
one  may  furnish  stories  frankly  labelled  as  aphro- 
disiac; another's  expressed  intention  may  be  to 
warn  against  sexual  perversions.  But,  all  in  all, 
these  books  and  this  tendency  must  be  reckoned 
with,  and  I  make  no  apology  for  this  reference  to 
them  here.  The  missionary  who  does  not,  to  some 
extent,  know  them  does  not  know  his  people. 
23 


354  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

But  the  Muslim  himself  will  not  speak  to  you 
of  these  things.  He  knows  perfectly  well  that 
we  do  not  speak  of  them;  he  knows  that  they 
lie  outside  of  the  possibilities  with  us;  but  with 
him  they  lie  entirely  within  the  possibilities. 
They  are  a  normal  part  of  literature,  received, 
accepted  by  all.  So  that,  then,  is  the  difficulty. 
I  have  no  shadow  of  doubt  myself  that  for  any 
one  who  would  know  the  Muslim  mind  it  Is 
absolutely  necessary  that  he  should  know  some- 
thing of  such  books  as  these ;  otherwise  one  large 
portion  of  that  mind  will  be  mysterious  and 
inaccessible  to  him.  He  will  not  know  how  to 
understand  his  people  as  they  are.  And  he  will 
meet  references  which  he  cannot  turn  because  he 
does  not  see  clearly  their  point. 

Yet  he  cannot  discuss  these  things  with  the 
Muslims;  that  for  him  would  be  very  much  out 
of  place.  He  should  certainly  do  nothing  to 
hinder  the  coming  of  the  time  when  such  con- 
versation will  be  as  impossible  in  the  East  as 
with  us.  And  that  there  is  such  a  difference 
the  East  already  very  well  knows.  Even  the 
Egyptian  felldhin,  although  in  time  of  inundation 
they  will  work  together  naked  in  the  fields,  men 


INNER   SIDE  OF   MUSLIM  LIFE  355 

and  women,  side  by  side,  are  plainly  perturbed 
when  they  are  observed  at  this  by  a  European. 
They  know  it  is  not  our  way.  But  the  missionary 
must  know  their  ways  and  their  ideas  and  he 
can  easily  know  them  now  because  of  the  spread 
of  printing.  All  the  things  which  were  once 
for  missionary  and  student  so  hard  of  access  are 
now,  for  better  or  for  worse,  within  reach  of 
any.  When  Lane,  for  example,  in  the  thirties 
of  last  century  was  in  Cairo,  all  he  could  do  was 
to  talk  with  such  of  his  friends  as  were  willing 
to  talk  with  him  upon  the  things  on  which  he 
desired  information  and  pick  up  manuscripts  here 
and  there.  But  manuscripts  are  expensive  and 
difficult  to  find.  A  man  who  limits  his  reading 
to  them  will  not  be  able  to  cover  the  whole 
range  of  interest.  Also,  there  is  the  difficulty 
of  getting  your  friends  to  talk  about  things  with 
you.  Thus  Lane  himself  tells  us  that  his  only 
method,  on  more  difficult  points  of  religion  and 
usage,  was  to  take  one  of  the  laxer  of  his  Muslim 
friends,  a  man  who  evidently  had  not  the  same 
objection  as  the  rest  to  discussing  these  matters 
with  him,  and  to  get  from  this  man  a  certain 
knowledge  of  the  subject.     He  would,  then,  casu- 


0 


356  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

ally  enter  into  conversation  with  others,  upon 
that  subject,  and  show  that  he  knew  something 
about  it.  So  they  would  slip  into  conversation 
upon  it,  and  he  would  learn  more  and  more. 
With  a  man  who  knew  nothing  of  the  subject 
they  would  not  begin  upon  it;  but,  apparently, 
they  thought,  '*If  he  knows  so  much  already,  we 
may  as  well  make  no  further  difficulties."  Or 
they  may  have  thought  nothing  at  all  about  it; 
but  talked  with  him  as  with  one  of  themselves. 

Now  all  that  difficulty  has  practically  gone  by. 
On  all  these  subjects  which  I  have  been  putting 
before  you  in  this  lecture — those  inner  subjects, 
difficult  of  access — there  are  great  numbers  of 
printed  books  which  any  one  can  read  and  so  fol- 
low the  currents  of  popular  life  and  thought. 
Very  many  of  them,  too,  are  printed  in  colloquial 
Arabic  and  not  In  the  literary  Arabic  of  the  edu- 
cated, for  they  are  the  reading  of  the  masses  of 
the  people.  And  the  reading  of  the  masses  is 
precisely  what  the  missionary  should  read. 

Having  mentioned  this  colloquial  Arabic,  permit 
me  to  diverge  a  moment  and  say  that,  for  me, 
the  great  hope  of  the  Arabic  speaking  races  lies 
in  the  rise  of  an  Arabic  literature  written  in  the 


INNER   SIDE  OF    MUSLIM   LIFE  2>S7 

language  really  spoken  by  these  peoples.  At  pres- 
ent their  older  literature  is  as  remote  for  them 
as  Latin  to  an  Italian  or  Spaniard.  And  of  such 
a  neo-Arabic  literature  a  beginning  has  been 
made,  although  so  far  it  is  mostly  limited  to 
stories,  jests  and  satirical  verses.  More  serious 
subjects  still  array  themselves  in  the  language 
of  the  schools.  Yet  the  beginning  has  been  made, 
and  all  that  is  needed  now  is  the  appearance  of  a 
man  of  genius,  a  Dante  or  a  Chaucer,  who  will 
follow  up  that  beginning  and  write  books  of 
weight  and  genius  in  this  colloquial  dialect. 
When  he  comes,  with  him  will  come  the  new 
Arabic  literature — a  renaissance  as  tremendous  as 
that  of  Europe. 

With  all  these  books  it  is,  then,  for  the  mis- 
sionary to  follow  the  example  of  Lane.  He  must 
read  them  carefully  and  learn  the  beginnings  from 
them.  Then  the  people  will  fall  in  with  him 
and  go  on  and  talk  further  with  him,  and  he  will 
be  able  by  such  means  to  work  into  the  inner 
recesses  of  their  minds. 

And  so,  finally,  my  last  word  in  this  course 
of  lectures  must  be  the  word  with  which  I  began. 
What  is  needed  by  the   missionary,   needed  by 


358  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

any  one  who  wishes  to  understand  this  people 
and  to  afifect  them,  is  sympathy,  knowledge,  intel- 
ligence; courtesy,  too,  at  every  point.  And  let 
me  say,  though  I  have  no  desire  to  bring  railing 
accusations  and  while  I  am  not  thinking  now 
of  one  race  more  than  another,  yet  I  have  seen  in 
Cairo  and  in  Syria  cases  of  what  to  me  was  quite 
unintelligible  discourtesy  towards  the  natives  by 
different  nationalities  and  vocations — by  officials 
and  by  missionaries,  teachers  and  merchants,  by 
French,  by  English,  by  Americans,  by  Germans. 
Sympathy,  then,  the  being  able  to  enter  into  their 
ideas;  knowledge,  the  having  soaked  himself  in 
those  ideas;  intelligence  and  courtesy  to  adapt 
himself  to  them  and  to  their  ways — these  are 
among  the  first  essentials  for  the  missionary. 
And  these  it  is  certain  that  he  cannot  possibly 
have,  unless  he  is  genuinely  in  love  with  the  people 
of  his  field;  likes  them  and  theirs;  is  in  many 
respects  one  of  them.  If  he  finds  them  beginning 
to  rasp  upon  him,  he  may  know  either  that  he  is 
not  the  man  for  them,  or,  if  the  rasping  is  a  new 
thing,  that  there  is  something  wrong  with  his 
nerves,  and  that  he  ought  to  rest  until  he  feels 
himself  at  peace  again  with  his  flock.     I  have 


INNER    SIDE  OF    MUSLIM   LIFE  359 

read  books,  for  that  matter,  by  missionaries 
describing  their  fields,  which  were  nothing  but 
a  long  exhibition  of  nerves.  The  paradox,  in 
truth,  of  the  missionary's  life  is  that  he  must 
have  a  liking  for  his  people  and  their  queerest 
little  ways  even  while  he  is  trying  to  change  them. 
In  the  case  of  one  of  the  most  successful  mis- 
sionaries to  the  Orient  that  I  have  known,  I  have 
heard  a  considerable  part  of  his  success  ascribed 
to  the  mere  fact  that  he  was  somewhat  slow ;  he 
did  not  hurry;  he  was  prepared  to  wait;  he  did 
not  talk  fast;  he  did  not  move  fast;  he  had  the 
oriental  movements.  He  was  in  physical  sym- 
pathy with  his  people,  and  this,  though  a  special 
and  somewhat  concrete  and  instinctive  case  of  the 
courtesy  and  intelligence  that  are  always  neces- 
sary, is  still  a  very  suggestive  one.  Above  all, 
the  missionary  must  not  think  of  his  people  that 
their  ideas,  their  ways — any  of  these  things  I 
have  been  putting  before  you  tonight — are  signs 
of  childishness  or  are  ridiculous.  He  must  sweep 
out  of  his  vocabulary  such  words  as  "childish'* 
and  "ridiculous" ;  must,  instead,  think  of  their 
characteristics  as  interesting,  and  of  the  people 
as,  at  most,  childlike. 


360  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

How,  to  illustrate,  would  we  handle  a  child 
who  had  the  ideas  of  a  child  about  fairies  or 
about  Santa  Claus,  or  who  was  somewhat  weak- 
kneed  on  the  subject  of  fact.  We  certainly  would 
not  talk  to  him  about  ridiculousness  or  childish- 
ness or  use  abusive  forms  of  speech.  We  would 
take  him  as  he  was ;  make  the  best  of  him ;  and 
try  to  guide  him,  using  those  ideas  of  his  as  we 
might,  and  being  sure  that  they  would  fade,  as 
they  must,  into  the  light  of  too  common  day. 

That  is  essentially  the  problem  of  the  missionary 
in  dealing  with  the  Muslim  peoples.  All  these 
things  are  simply  parts  of  that  strange,  childlike 
attitude  towards  life  which  you  find  in  them,  and 
they  have  to  be  handled  with  the  same  delicacy, 
with  the  same  sympathy,  which  you  would  use 
with  a  child.  The  missionary  must,  then,  have 
that  sympathy,  knowledge,  intelligence,  of  which 
I  have  spoken,  and,  besides  these,  faith,  hope  and 
charity — faith  that  something  is  coming,  must 
come,  faith  in  his  people  and  in  its  possibilities; 
hope,  not  to  be  cast  down  though  the  way  is  long 
and  slow,  and  he  cannot  see  far  ahead;  and  an 
infinite  charity  for  and  with  them  in  all  senses  of 
the  word ;  love,  forbearance  and  sympathy. 


INNER    SIDE   OF    MUSLIM   LIFE  361 

And  especially  at  the  present  time  there  is  need 
of  that  attitude  towards  the  Muslim  East,  and 
that  not  only  on  the  part  of  missionaries  or  of 
those  who  are  resident  there;  but  on  the  part  of 
us  all.  In  Turkey  a  great  experiment  is  going 
on.  The  reform  of  Turkey  is  being  attempted 
from  within ;  it  is  not  to  be  a  thing  imposed  from 
without,  as  in  Egypt  or  India  or  Algeria,  but  one 
actually  working  out  upon  the  people  from  within. 
That  is  a  tremendous  experiment  and  a  thing  to  be 
helped  in  every  way.  But  we  may  be  sure  that 
that  experiment  will  be  very  slow;  that  the  way 
before  it  is  very  hard;  that  only  a  small  section 
of  the  Turkish  population  is  really  in  thorough 
sympathy  with  it;  and  that  the  section  which  is 
will  have  to  work  hard,  bitterly,  fearfully,  to  be 
able  to  bring  this  experiment  to  a  successful  issue. 
It  is  for  us,  then,  to  have  sympathy  with  them; 
to  have  knowledge  of  the  situation;  to  show 
intelligence  towards  them ;  it  is  for  us  to  have  faith 
in  them ;  and  to  bear  with  them  if  the  full  fruition 
is  long  in  coming.  It  will  be  long;  every  one 
who  knows  the  situation  sees  that  it  will  be  long; 
but  we  must  have  patience.  We  must  not  think 
that  they  can  hurry  things;  that  they  can  turn 


362  ASPECTS    OF    ISLAM 

Turkey  at  once  into  a  modern  state.  We  mu§t 
not  be  surprised  if  the  same  things  that  happened 
in  the  past  sometimes  happen  again;  we  must 
have  patience.  We  must  give  them  a  chance  to 
show  what  they  can  do — that  is  the  last  word, 
must  be  the  last  word  of  any  one  who  speaks 
upon  Islam  and  its  possibilities.  There  is  a  long 
road  lying  ahead  before  anything  Is  to  be 
reached  that  will  be  worth  reaching,  but  I  believe 
that  that  road  has  now  been  entered. 


INDEX 


'Abbasid  period  of  culture,   305. 

*Abd,    247. 

'Abd    al-HamId,    277. 

"Abode    of    Islam,"    276. 

Abu   Bekr,    180. 

Abu  Bekr  ibn  al-'Arabi,  317. 

Abyssinia,    263. 

Abyssinian    Christianity,    54. 

"Acceptance"   of  Ash'arites,    139. 

Adam,     98,     218. 

Addition,    class   in,    289. 

Africa,    283. 

Agnosticism  in  Islam,   147  f. 

"Agreement"    in    Islam,     112    f. 

Ahmad,  as  name  of  Muhammad, 

215    f. 

Ahmad  ibn  Hanbal,  227  i.,  270. 

Ahmadites,    49. 

Albanians,    153. 

Alexander   the    Great,   252. 

Algeria,    155. 

'All,   deifying  of,  g6. 

'A  lima,  298. 

Allah,  70,  71,  97,  121,  125;  and 
the  world,  43,  185;  the  only 
abiding,  44;  the  only  reality, 
45.  75.  185,  how  different 
cognates  of  the  name  struck 
a  Muslim,  55;  "Difference" 
of,  131,  133,  142,  199,  201; 
existence  of,  126;  submission 
1j,  72;  Allah  and  not-Allah, 
75;  primal  covenant  of,  with 
man,  98;  Most  Beautiful 
Names  of,  116,  119,  127,  181; 
doctrine  of  Person  of,  123  ff. ; 
"Priority"  of,  127;  "Contin- 
uance" of,  130;  settles  Him- 
self upon  His  throne,  132; 
the  Most  Merciful  of  those 
that    show     mercy,     133;     His 

The    Arabic   article    (a/,    etc.) 
at  the  beginning  of  any  of  these 


self-subsistence,  134;  unity  of, 

135-142. 
"Allah I"   346. 

"Allah!    Allah!   Allah!"    116. 
"Allah's    are   the    East    and   the 

West,"    75,    186. 
Americans    in    Hawaii,    287. 
Amir  al-Hajj,    35. 
Amos,    67,    263;    Book    of,    77. 
Ananikian,     Mr.,     of     Hartford 

Seminary,   156. 
-Andalus,  316. 
Angels  in  Islam,    70. 
Anselmo  di  Turmeda,  230. 
Anthropomorphists  in  Islam,  131. 
Anthropomorphisms     in     Qur'an 

1 86. 

Antinomianism,    153. 

Apprentice    system,     307. 

Aquinas,    120,    139,    184. 

Arab  national  unity,  260. 

Arabi    Pasha,    252. 

Arabia,  332;  law  of,  57;  of 
Muhammad's  time,  56;  popu- 
lation of,  57;  in  religious  un- 
rest,  58. 

Arabian  Nights,  23,  36,  44,  64, 
226,  281,   327,  339,   351    f. 

Arabic,  importance  of  classical, 
8;  poetry,  116,  317;  philology, 
310,  314,  317;  philosophy,  314; 
of  literature,  320;  spoken, 
320;   renaissance  of,  357. 

'Arafa,    298. 

Architecture,   no  Arab,   306   f. 

Aristotle,    128,    142    f.,    144. 

Arithmetic,  290  f.,  308,  317. 

Artisan,    306. 

Artist   an  artisan,  305. 

Arts    and    crafts,    305. 

is    omitted    when   it   would   occur 
entries;  in  its  place  a  -  is  inserted. 


363 


3^4 


INDEX 


Ascension  Day,  2T,  Muslim  doc- 
trine   of,    26. 

Ascetic  exercises  in  Islam,  184, 
187. 

-Ash'ari,    140. 

Ash'arites,    139. 

Asia,  283,  European  peril  to, 
252. 

Asia   Minor,    279. 

"Aspect"  of  things  towards 
Allah,    202. 

Assassins,    305. 

Atomic  philosophy  in  Islam,  144; 
system  of  atoms  for  time,  138. 

Aucassin   et  Nicolette,   279. 

Augustine,    120,    184,    190. 

Auto-hypnosis  of  darwishes,   163, 

346- 

Autonomy  of  non-Muslim  organ- 
izations,   267. 

-Azhar  University,  36,  168,  254, 
289,  293,  303,  3"»  321,  351; 
head  of,   288. 

B 

Bab  az-Zuwela,  205. 

Baghdad,     227,    301. 

Bagpipes  in   Cairo,   48. 

Baha    ad-Din,    his    biography    of 

Saladin,  280. 
Balkans,  252. 
Barkh,     229. 

"Begotten   not   made,"   247. 
Bektashites,    152,     154,    155. 
Belles    lettres,    302,    317. 
Benediction     of     the      Christian 

Church,   69. 
-Beruni,    234,    236. 
Bible,     difference    and    influence 

of,     15;     importance     of,     13; 

in  Islam,  210. 
Biographical     dictionaries,     306. 
-Bira    in    Palestine,     291. 
Birth  of  the  Prophet,    117. 
Birthday  of  the  Prophet,  166. 
Black  Mass,  330. 


Breathing   to   produce   emotional 

religious    effects,    162. 
Browning,  73;  his  "Abt  Vogler," 

40;   his  "Grammarian,"   315. 
Buddhism,    191,   250    f. 
Buddhist  prayer  wheel,  89. 
-Bukhari's  Sahlh,  65. 
Burhamites,  49. 
Burton,    Sir    Richard,    330. 
Byzantium,  57,  261,  263. 


Cadis  College,  320. 

Cairene,     typical     representative 

of,   38. 

Cairo,  27,  32,  34,  35,  42,  f.,  47, 
92,  152,  155,  159,  166,  168, 
173,  180,  205  f-.  282,  288, 
292  f.,  301,  320,  327,  328, 
333,  336,  338  f.,  350  f.,  355. 
358;   City  of,  205. 

Calligrapher,  308,   316. 

Calligraphy,  306. 

Calvin,    120,  284. 

Canon  law,  300  f. 

Cantatas  of  the  birth  of  the 
Prophet,  345. 

Cante-fable,   279. 

Carmel  and  priests  of  Baal,  91. 

Carving,    306. 

Catalan   national   literature,  230. 

Causation  in  Islam,    148. 

Cave  in  Muqattam  Hills,   152. 

Caves,    rock-hewn,    63. 

Central   Arabian    States,    276. 

Certificate,  personal,  of  professor, 

291,  303. 

Character   in  education,    321. 

Charms   in  a  kuttab,   295. 

Chaucer,  357;  his  "Knight,"  278; 
his  "Wife  of   Bath,"  278. 

Chesterton,  Mr.  G.   K.,   139- 

Children   of   Israel,    229. 

China,    285,    286. 

Christ,  26;  "back  to  Christ!", 
no;  one  nature  of,  190;  doc- 
trine of,  in  Islam,  243. 


INDEX 


365 


Christian  hermits,  influence  of, 
on  Muhammad,  62;  asceticism 
of,  192;  liturgies,  69;  ambass- 
ador in  Kerbela  legend,  94; 
mystics,    190. 

Christians,  71,  117,  216,  220, 
224,  250,  251,  30s,  307;  as 
subjects  of  Muslims,  status  of, 

211. 
Church  militant,    none   in   Islam, 

44;  triumphant,  44;   Church  of 

the    Holy   Sepulchre,    174. 
"Circle,"     impossibility    of     the, 

128. 
Class-meetings,     Methodist,     i93- 
Clubs     and    associations,     future 

of,   13- 
Colloquial    Arabic,     351,    356     f. 
Comforter,    promise   of   the,    215. 
Commentaries,    abuse    of,    310    f. 
Common-sense    Islam,    256. 
Comparative     historical     methods 

and  origins  of   Islam,   54. 
Congress      of      Orientalists      at 

Algiers,    40. 
Conspiracy  of  misinformation,  7, 

30. 

Constantinople,    155    f. 

Controversy,  use  and  abuse  of, 
13;  danger  in,  18;  of  Muslims 
and   Christians,   231. 

Conventions,  Muslim  attitude  to 
European,    324. 

Conversation,  frankness  of  Ori- 
ental, 354- 

Countenance   of  Yahwe,    186. 

Covering  of  the  Ka'ba,  exhibi- 
tion  of,    166. 

Crafts  and   trades,    290. 

Creation,   beginning  of,   218. 

Criticism    of    Islam  by    Muslims, 

47   f- 
Crcesus,     22^. 
Cromer,  Lord,  37;  Modern  Egypt 

of,    181. 
Crucifixion,  the,  not  accepted  by 

Muslims,  26,  24s,  248. 


"Cry  out"  and  "read,"  in  Sem- 
itic,   291. 

Curtiss,  Primitive  Semitic  Relig- 
ion To-day,  330. 

D 

Dahnhardt,   Natursagen,  326. 

Damascus,  282,    308. 

Dante,   357. 

Ddr    al-barb,    275. 

Dar  al-hikma,  301. 

Ddr    al-Isldm,    275. 

Darwishes,  22,  46,  49,  50,  91. 
93»  116,  345.  347.  348;  of 
working    classes,    51. 

Darwish  fraternities,  144  ff., 
295;  can  Christians  enter? 
154;  as  Church  organizations, 
176;  development  of,  202; 
mythical  founders  of,  203;  the 
Path   of,    204. 

Darwish  monastery,  27;  monas- 
teries,  ruins  of,    158. 

Darwish    Mustafa,    43. 

Darwish,    professional,    158,    167. 

Darwishing,  too  much,   173. 

David,    220,   241. 

Day  of  "Am  I  not?"  98. 

Day   of   Doom,    71. 

Day  of  Judgment  for  Muham- 
mad, 63. 

Dead   Sea,   247. 

De  Sacy,  Chrestomathie  arabe, 
276. 

Deuteronomy,  Book  of,  (xviii, 
18),    234;    (xxxiii,    2),    235. 

Devils,     70;     devil-worship,     331. 

Diplomacy  between  Muslims  and 
Christians,    275. 

Divergencies,     local,     in     Islam, 

157. 
Doctrine  of  the  saved  in  Islam, 

71. 
Dominican     Order,     158. 
Donkey-boy,    use    of,    38,    349- 
Dreaming    in    Islam,    188. 
Drums  of  darwishes,   49,    163. 


z(>^ 


INDEX 


Ecclesiastes,   Book   of,   59,   61. 

Education   in    Islam,  288    ff. 

Efrxt  in    an   engine,    340. 

Egypt,  4,  43,  49.  52,  152  f., 
160,  180,  263,  274,  278,  294 
f.,   310,   319    f-,   534,   340,    343. 

Egyptian     nationalists,     254     f., 

217- 
Elia   Qudsi,   308. 
Emerson,    R.    W.,   60. 
Emotional    religiosity,    49. 
Encyclopedic,    181. 
"Endless  chain,"  impossibility  of 

the,    128. 
Engine,  efrlt  in  the,   340. 
Engineer,    306. 
Enneads  of  Plotinus,   142. 
Erotic  literature,   351. 
Esau,  235. 

Ethics  in    Islam,  297. 
Europeans,     careless     statements 

of    orientalized,    31,    37. 
Eve,   other    children    of,    326. 
"Everything  goes  to  destruction," 

186. 
"Existence,"   What  is?,    125 
Ezra,  225. 


Face   of   Allah,    186,    188,    201; 

face  of  thy   Lord,    187. 
Fall,   the,  in   Islam,   61;    Pauline 

doctrine  of,  62. 
Faran,  236. 

Farthest  Lote  Tree,  the,  76. 
Fast,    the,    72. 
Fatiha,    the,     25,     70,     83,     161; 

translation    and    use    of,    25. 
Fatimids,  the,  301,  305. 
Fellahln,    Egyptian,    354. 
Fiqls.    295-299. 

Fire,   the,    102;    fear  of,    187. 
First  Cause,  the,  130. 
Folk-tales,    326,     340. 
Fountains,    public,    292. 
Franciscans,    150,    158,    230. 


Free-masonry,  307. 
Friday  sermon,  31,    118. 
Fulani    Emirates,    252. 


Gabriel,    Angel,    108,   244. 
-Gamaliya,    district   in   Cairo,    92. 
Genesis,   Book   of,  61,   239. 
Geneva,    284. 
-Ghazzair,    36,    139,    194,    196-201, 

203,  228  f.,  302. 
Ghazzalite    darwishes,    no    order 

of,   203. 
Girls,     education     of,    in     Islam, 

293    i- 

God  is  all,  193;  exists  through 
Himself  only,  201;  never  with- 
out  a   witness,    217. 

Golden   Legend,    23. 

Golden    period    in    Islam,    237. 

Goldziher,    Ignaz,    210. 

Gondeshapur,    305. 

Gospel,  the,  217,  242;  the  Gos- 
pels,    no;     of    Barnabas,    230. 

Government    schools,    319. 

Grammar,    study    of,    301. 

Granada,  316. 

Greek  Church,  Logos  doctrine 
in,    105;    theology    of,    124. 

Grimm's  Kinder  und  Haus- 
Mdrchen,  326. 

H 

Hafis,  299. 
•Hajjaj,    240. 
Hajj    caravan,    35. 
Hallucination   and   suggestion    in 

case  of  darwishes,  207. 
Hamilton,  Sir  William,    148. 
-Hamzawiya     district     in     Cairo, 

92. 
Hanbalites,   46. 
-Haqq,    75. 

Harun    ar-Rashid,    295. 
Hawaii,     American     missionaries 

in,    287. 
Heart   of   man,   the,    196,   201. 


INDEX 


367 


Hebrews,   migration  of,   58. 

Herodotus,  350. 

Hierarchy    of    saints    in    Islam, 

204. 
High  Church  Islam,  96. 
Historical   methods    of    Muslims, 

52. 
History,    v.   stories,    349. 
Holy  Spirit,  the,  247. 
Hosea,  67,  263. 
Hospitality  of   darwishes,    153. 
Hospitals  at   Baghdad,  305. 
"Ho,     the     friends     of    Allah!" 

204. 
Hungary,    252. 
-Husayn,  91,  92,   94. 
Hypnotic   or   hypnoidal  states   of 

darwishes,    164,    173,   331,    346. 
Hypnotism  in  the  East,  174,  347. 


Ibn  Hazm,  238,  240. 

Ibn   Hisham,    310. 

Ibn   Khaldun,   309-319. 

Ibn    Taymiya,    46. 

Idealism,  how  expressed  in  Ara- 
bic,  42. 

Ihya  of  al-Ghazzali,  36. 

Illuminating,    306. 

Impassibility   of  Allah,    200. 

Impossible,   the,    121. 

Independent  teachers  in  Islam, 
290. 

India,    257,    285. 

Ingersoll,    R.    G.,    239. 

Injil,  242. 

Ink-mirror,   334. 

Inner  Light,   the,    146,    149,    194. 

Inner      side      of      Muslim      life, 

323   ff- 
Inspiration,      doctrine      of,       14; 

minor,  of  Saints  of  Allah,  188. 
Isaiah,    67;     (xl,    6),    65;     (xxi, 

6-7),  236. 
Ishmael,   235. 
Islam   as   a   religion,    12;    future 


of,  12;  in  the  broad,  19; 
meaning  of,  20,  262;  and 
Christianity,  absolute  difference 
between,  45;  High  Church 
Islam,  96;  theological  eclec- 
ticism of,  97;  line  of  future 
escape  for,  iii;  primeval,  218; 
confronting  the  non-Muslim 
world,  251;  economic  danger 
for,  252;  decay  of  militant, 
252;  modernizing  of,  255; 
common-sense,  256;  spread  of, 
in  history,  257;  utilitarian, 
257;  "the  religion  of  all  sen- 
sible men,"  257;  Islam  and 
non-Muslims,  265;  must  dom- 
inate, 284;  unable  to  distin- 
guish church  and  state,  284; 
in   China,   285. 

Isnad,    53. 

Israel,  259. 


Jaques  in  "As  you  like  it,"  280. 

Jerusalem,  26,  174,  279,  291, 
337.  343;  Latin  kingdom  of, 
253. 

Jesus,  loi,  106,  215,  220,  225, 
236,  241  f.,  246-248;  imitation 
of,  103;  different  from  other 
prophets,  243 ;  miraculous  birth 
of,  244;  miracles  of,  244; 
position  for  Muslims  of,  244; 
sinlessness  of,  244;  wisdom  of, 
244;  ascension  of,  245;  cruci- 
fixion of,  245;  not  killed  by 
men,  245;  Spirit  of  Allah, 
24s;  Word  of  Allah,  245. 

Jesuit    priest,    14. 

Jesuits  in  Paraguay,  287. 

Jews,  71,  216,  220,  224,  250, 
305;  in  medieval   Europe,  267. 

Jewish  tribes  of  Arabia,  55. 

Jinn,    36,    64-66,    70,    331,    339, 

341. 
Jizya,   266. 

Job,    235. 


368 


INDEX 


John  of  Damascus,   124,  231;  on 

controversy,   271. 
John's     Gospel,     (xiv,     16,     26), 

(xv,  26),    (xvi,   7),   215. 
Joshua,    225. 

Journeys   of    students,    303,    318. 
Judas,  249. 

Judges,    Book   of,   219. 
Judgments  of  God,  Muhammad's 

view    of,    63. 
Jurisprudence,    300. 

K 

Ka'ba,    the,    34,    47,    205,    259. 

Kaiir,  34. 

Kant,    125. 

Kareno,  99. 

Kerbela,  91,  94. 

-Khadir,    206    f.,    209. 

Khalwati      fraternity      of      dar- 

wishes,    168. 
Kliaraj,   266. 
Khatlb,   sword  of,  31. 
Khedive,   the,   35,   37. 
-Kindi,  Epistle  of,  271   f. 
"King   of  Day  of  Doom,"    70. 
Kiszva,    34,    37,    48. 
Knowledge  from  Allah  Himself, 

190. 
Korah,    225. 
Kudiya,    333. 
Kuttab,  293,  295  f.,  299;  of  'Abd 

ar-Rahman,    292. 


Lady    Mandura,    329    f. 
La  ilaha  illa-llah,   161,  227. 
Lane,  E.  W.,  330,  336,  355,  357; 
Modern  Egyptians  of,  96,   171, 

325,    334- 

Last  Day,  the,  245  f. ;  doctrine 
of,    70. 

Latin   Church,    124. 

"Law,   the,"  217,   228,  236. 

Lay  membership  in  darwish  fra- 
ternities,   159. 

Laysa  min  ad-din,   50. 


Leaves  of  Abraham,  217. 

Leibnitz,    144. 

Letters,    divination    by,    338. 

Lexicography,    study    of,    301. 

Liberty,   religious,   in   Islam,   179. 

"Light  of  Light,"   69,    100. 

Light   of  Muhammad,  98,    loi. 

"Light    of   the    world,"    69. 

Logic,  302,  313,  314;  logic- 
machine,    123;    study   of,  288. 

Logos,    doctrine    of,    106    f. 

"Lord  of  the  Worlds,"  36. 

Lotus  tree  in  Roda,  329. 

Louis   XVI,   276. 

Love  of  God  (subject  and  ob- 
ject),   199,   200. 

Lucretius,    144. 

Lull,    Ramon,    122    f. 

Luther,    284. 

M 

Maalesh,    38. 
Madrasa,   34,  302,  318. 
-Maghrib,    315. 

Magians,  71;  a  "People  of  Script- 
ure," 217. 
Magic,  339,   343;  books  on,  336, 

338. 
Magic    mirror,    334,    344;    magic 

square,    335,    342. 
Magician,    334-336,    341. 
Magnificat,    the,    214. 
Mahdl   of   the    Sudan,    252,    254. 
Mahmal,   34. 

Malik    (use  of,    as   title),    276. 
Malikite  canon  law,   310. 
-Ma'mun,    271    f.,    301. 
Man  in  God's  image,    196;   spirit 

of   God  in,    195. 
Mansel,    H.     L.,    148. 
Marclien,   327,    340. 
Marriage      festival,      cantata     at, 

118. 
Marti,    Ramon,    139. 
-Mashriq,   316. 
Maspero,    Sir    Gaston,    339,    341. 


INDEX 


369 


Masses    of  Islam,    their    attitude 

to    Christians,    281. 
Master-builder,    306. 
Mathematics,     307;     and    astron- 
omy,   302,    305;    status   of,    in 

Islam,    289. 
Mawlawite    darwishes,    153. 
Mawlawite    monastery,    152. 
Mecca,   34   f.,   47,   152,   167,   205, 

236;    ritual  of,   in   Islam,    259. 
Meccans,    81,   219,    259. 
Medieval     Europe,    the    clue    to 

Islam,   282. 
Medieval      intercourse      between 

Europe  and  Asia,   278. 
-Medina,  dT,  80,  259,  261   f. ;   of 

Cairo,    92. 
Menendez    y    Pelayo's    Origenes 

de  la  Novela,  123,  230. 
Messenger,  a,  to  come,  215. 
Methuselah,  239. 
Millennium,   245. 
Miniature   painting,   306. 
Min  ladimnd,   190. 
Miracles     (Gospel)     imitated     in 

Islam,     232;     of     saints,     170, 

347  f- 

Mirghanite    darwishes,    135. 

Mirror,    metaphor  of  the,    196. 

Missionaries,  151,  274,  343,  3Si> 
353.  355-359;  training  of,  i 
ff. ;  attitude  and  character  of, 
2;  work,  essentials  of,  10; 
problems  of  education  of,  11; 
methods  of,  13;  theological 
training  of,  14;  attitude  of,  to 
Muslim  saints,  29;  danger 
for,  39;  reading  of,  323  ff. ; 
first  essential  for,  357;  profes- 
sional Muslim  missionaries, 
283;  greatest  problem  of  Chris- 
tian missionaries,  287,  360; 
Women    missionaries,    4,     334. 

Missionary  activity  of  Muslims, 
250    ff.,    269. 

Missionary  religions,  three  great, 
250. 

24 


Mission     fields,     different     situa- 
tions  in,    19. 
Mission  schools  and  colleges,  11, 

319. 

Missions,    what    are    they?    256. 

Modern  Egypt  by  Lord  Cromer, 
181. 

Monophysite   heresy,    190. 

Moors,  expulsion  of,  from  Spain, 
286. 

Moralizing  of  Semites,   102. 

Morocco,   276,   279. 

Moses,  220,  225,  228  f.,  236,  241, 
263. 

Mosque,  Imam  of,  177;  place  of, 
in  Islam,  177;  teaching  in, 
301;  of  the  Ascension,  26; 
of  Ibn  Tiilun,  42;  of  the 
Hasanen,  47  f.,  92,  95;  of  Abu 
Dawud,  289;  of  -Mu'ayyad, 
290,  351. 

Mount    of    Olives,    26. 

Mount  Paran,   235. 

Mu'allim,  307. 

Muhammad,  108,  116,  124,  188, 
200,  203,  210,  236,  246,  248, 
249;  legend  of,  12,  232;  col- 
loquial language  of,  40;  per- 
son and  life  of,  46  ff. ;  the 
historical,  51;  a  trance-medium, 
55,  64,  72;  clue  to,  56;  chron- 
ology of,  59;  a  pathological 
case,  60,  63,  72,  75;  his  feel- 
ing for  the  poor  and  helpless, 
60,  71;  early  life  of,  60;  his 
sense  of  evil  in  the  world,  60, 
62;  and  the  jinn,  64;  his  use 
of  phrases  picked  up  at  Chris- 
tiaei  services,  65,  214;  his 
relation  to  the  Old  Testament 
prophets,  65,  73;  "investigates" 
Jewish  boy's  phenomena,  67; 
doctrines  held  by,  69;  not  an 
impostor,  72;  sword  of,  how 
gained,  73;  not  a  general,  73; 
often  unpolitic,  73;  his  fall  and 
last    ten    years,    74;     attached 


370 


INDEX 


men  to  himself,  74;  a  judge 
of  character,  74;  in  Medina, 
74;  not  a  theologian,  75,  187; 
his  mind  concrete,  75;  a  dual- 
ist and  yet  a  monist,  75;  a 
mystic,  ^(>,  184;  trance  utter- 
ances of,  TT,  79;  how  revela- 
tion came  to,  78;  consciously 
forging,  79;  formally  a  sooth- 
sayer, 81;  his  vision  of  the 
Heavenly  Book,  82;  took  no 
care  to  preserve  the  Qur'an, 
82;  his  meaning  for  Muslims 
now,  90,  97;  doctrine  on  per- 
son of,  96;  descendants  of, 
96;  the  worlds  created  for,  97; 
a  prophet  before  creation  of 
Adam,  98;  glorified  ancestry 
of,  99;  influences  on  doctrine 
of  the  person  of,  99;  a  Light 
from  Allah,  100;  sinlessness  of, 
100;  are  his  parents  saved? 
100,  loi;  imitation  of,  103, 
311;  "Back  to  M.!,"  109;  his 
conception  of  Allah,  185;  an 
ascetic,  187;  a  God-intoxicated 
poet,  187;  his  belief  in  his  own 
mission,  211;  and  Jews  and 
Christians,  213;  no  story-teller, 
214;  "written  in  the  Script- 
ures," 215,  240;  the  Prophet 
of  the  Meccans,  219;  last  of 
the  Prophets,  219;  and  the 
Scriptures,  221;  and  mir- 
acles, 231;  did  not  claim 
miracles,  232;  created  before 
the  worlds,  246;  as  a  mission- 
ary, 257;  his  personal  claim, 
258;  a  religious  politician,  259; 
head  of  Church  and  State, 
259;  as  a  preacher,  260;  the 
Prophet  of  Arabia,  263. 

Muharram,    procession    and    cer- 
emony, 91   f. 

Mummies,   341. 

Muqattam   Hills,    152,   349. 

Museum  at   Cairo,  339-341. 


"Mush  kidaf"   321. 

Musil,  Arabia  Petrcea,   248. 

Muslim,  mission  field,  peculiar 
characteristics  of,  2;  peoples 
democratic,  5;  their  respect 
for  learning,  5;  controversy, 
handbook  of,  16;  contempt 
for  Western  logic,  120;  mys- 
tics, early,  191;  army,  how 
supported,  266;  rulers  and. 
Christians,  274;  architecture, 
307;    pedagogy,    319. 

Muslims,  different  classes  of, 
115;  relation  of  to  mosques, 
178;  and  friendship  with 
Christians,  273;  treaties  with 
Christians,  275;  and  native 
Christians,  278;  self-conscious 
with    Westerners,    354. 

Mtitun,    311. 

Mystical  theology,   197  f. 

Mysticism  in  Islam,  112,  145; 
metaphysical,  6;  ascetic,  192; 
speculative,    192. 

Mystics,  Muslim,  and  doctrine 
of  Scripture,  241 ;  all  thinking 
and  devout  Muslims  are,   113, 

lis. 

N 

Nablus,  33;  College  at,  34. 

-Nahhasin,    292. 

Naisabur,   302. 

Native   Christian,    still   a   native, 

287. 
Nature,    idea  of,   in   Islam,    139. 
Nazareth,  236. 
Nebi  Sa'in,  236. 
Necessary,   the,    121. 
Neo-Platonism,    99,    142    f.,    191. 
Nestorian  wave  of  conquest,  251. 
New  Testament,    the,   69,    117. 
Night   Journey,    the,    76. 
North  Africa,  310,   332. 

o 

Officials,  Christian,  in  Islam, 
268. 


INDEX 


371 


"Old   captive,   the,"   279. 

Old   Masr,   328. 

Old  Testament,  the,  61,  66,  69, 
88,  95,  186;  Muhammad's  re- 
lation  to   prophets   of,   65, 

Oratio,   107. 

Ordinances  against  non-Muslims, 
267. 

Oriental  Christians,  status  of, 
286. 

Oriental's  feeling  of  religious 
superiority,    39,    347. 

Original  sin,  no  doctrine  of,  in 
Islam,    61. 

Originator   of  the   world,   127. 


Paine,    Thomas,    239. 

Palestine,  344. 

Palmer's  translation  of  the  Qur'- 

an,  88. 
Pan-Islamism,    285. 
Pantheism,    143,    153,    193    f. 
Paraclete,   the,  216. 
Paradox  of  the  missionary's  life, 

359- 
Parents     of     Muhammad,     their 

fate,   10 1. 
Pascal,    139. 

Passion  Play  at  Kerbela,  92. 
"Peace,  the,"  in  Islam,  69. 
Pedagogy  in  Islam,   297   f.,   312, 

319- 
Pen,    the,    108. 
Pentateuch,  the,  225. 
People  of  the  Book,  210  f.,  213, 

215,    219. 
Persia,   57,   261,  263,  282. 
Persian    Islam,   92. 
Philosophy   in   Islam,   304. 
Phonograph  voice,    291. 
Physician,  training  of,  305. 
Pilate,   249. 
Pilgrimage,    72. 
Plato,    42,    143    f. 
Playing     games,     for     Orientals, 

319. 


Plotinus,    191. 

Poetry  in  Muslim  education,  317. 

Pons  asinorum,    120. 

Popular    literature,    323    ff. 

Possible,   the,    121. 

Prayerfulness,   duty   of  constant, 

193. 
Prayer  meeting,   166,    172. 
Prayer-niche,   verses   in    a,   43. 
Prayers,  five  legal  daily,  71,  118, 

193.    345- 
Preserved   Tablet,   the,    108. 
Primary  education  in  Islam,  299; 

schools,     232,     292,     299,     308, 

322. 
Printing  press,  value  of  the,  350, 

355   f- 
Procession  of  the  "Holy  Carpet," 

47. 

Prophetism  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment,   54. 

Prophets  of  the  Old  Testament, 
65.  67,  73,  258;  to  the  Arabs, 
66;  soothsaying,  67;  two  kinds 
of,    217. 

Proselytes,  early  to  Islam,  223, 
224. 

Prosody  in  Muslim  education, 
301. 

Proverbs,  Book   of,    102,   293. 

Psalms,   the,   214,   217. 


Qadirite  darwishes,  49,   153. 

Qadirite   monastery,    151. 

Qadis,   321. 

Qarun,   225,   228. 

Qasr   al-'aini   hospital,    152. 

Quakers,    146. 

Qualities   of    Allah,    125. 

Qur'an,  25,  27,  36,  41,  54,  65, 
69,  76,  106,  113,  116,  119,  133, 
197,  200,  212,  222,  225,  229, 
238-240,  242,  246,  263  f.,  289, 
299,  315-318,  342,  351;  Chapter 
of  the  Cow,  17;  origin  of,  40; 
form  of,  77;  earlier  and  later 


372 


INDEX 


parts,  78;  its  rhyme,  79;   lead- 
ing  articles  in,   80;   the   direct 
words    of    Allah,    80;    use    of 
parts    of    in    prayer,    82;    col- 
lected  after  the  death   of  Mu- 
hammad,   82;    in   chronological 
chaos,   83;    how    arranged,   83; 
cause     of     collection     of,     83; 
Meccan  and  Medinan  chapters 
of,    84;    Muslim    critical    work 
on,    85;   the   mind    of   Muham- 
mad, 85,  185;  Arabic  literature 
on,   86;    no    trustworthy  trans- 
lation of,  87;  difficult  to  under- 
stand,    87;     to     what     extent 
understood    by     Muslims,     88; 
recitation  of,  89,   281;   present 
Muslim    feeling    for,    90;    un- 
created,   105;    nature    of,    105; 
phrasing    of,     108;     utterance 
of,    109;    "Back    to    the    Q.!," 
iii;    reading    aloud    of,     117; 
"the     mind     of     Muhammad," 
185;       contradictions    in,    187; 
in  Muslim  education,  291,  296, 
313    ff. ;   texts   as   charms,   296. 
Qur'an,    (ii,    109),    75,    186;    (ii, 
274),    186;    (iii,   72),  221;    (iv, 
48),  221;    (iv,   iss,    156),   248; 
(vi,   52),    186;    (vi.    156),   215; 
(vii,  52),  132;  (vii,  150),  134; 
(x,     3),     132;     (x,     63),    204; 
(xii,    64,    92),    134;     (xiii,    2), 
132;   (xiii,  22),  186;   (xiii,  28), 
189;   (xv,  29),   195;   (xvii,  87), 
69»      195;      (xviii,     27),      186; 
(xviii,  64),  190;    (xx,  2),   132; 
(xxi,     83),     134;      (xxii,     17), 
217;     (xxiv,     35),     69;     (xxv, 
60),     132;     (xxviii,    88),    187; 
(xxx,  37,  38),   186;    (xxxii,  3), 
132;  (xxxiii,  41),  189;  (xxxviii, 
72),     19s;      (xliii,     12),     132; 
(xlviii,     I,    2),    100;     (liii,    37, 
38),   217;    (Iv,  26),    187;    (Ivii, 
4),    132;    (Ixi,    6),   215;    (Ixxii, 
6),      331      (Ixxvii,      9),      186; 


(Ixxxviii,   19),  217;    (xcii,  20), 
186;    (xcvi),   65. 
Qutb    or    Axis,    204    f. 


R 


RabbunS,  Muslim  use  of,  22. 

Ratio,   107. 

-Razi,  229;  his  commentary  on 
the   Qur'an,    229. 

Reading    of   the   masses,    356. 

Reason  and  Allah,  107;  reason  in 
Islam,  146;  use  of,  to  destroy 
philosophy,    149. 

Reasoning  of  Muslims  concrete, 
122. 

Religion  of  Arabs  of  Muham- 
mad's day,  70;  three-fold  basis 
of  religion,    145. 

Religious  experience  in  Islam, 
149;  r.  intuition,  190;  r.  novel- 
ists in  Islam,  228;  r.  feeling, 
344.    346. 

"Remembering"   God,    189. 

Renaissance  (European),  230, 
306;   in  Arabia,  56. 

"Rend    your    hearts,"    228. 

Revelation,    127;    history    of,    in 
Islam,     66;     history     of,     for     '   y 
Muhammad,   215. 

Revivals,    165. 

Rhetoric  in  education,   302. 

Rice's  Crusaders  of  the  Twen- 
tieth   Century,    16. 

Richard    Lion-Heart,    282. 

Rifa'ite   darwishes,   49. 

Roda,    Island   of,    328. 

Rodwell's  translation  of  the 
Qur'an,    88. 

Romances  in  Arabic,  popular, 
281,    350. 

Rosary  of  Islam,   115. 

Ruchdi  Pasha,  Madame,  Harems 
et  Musulmanes  d'Egypte,   330, 

333- 
Rulers,   Muslim,   and   Christians, 

273,   274. 


INDEX 


373 


Sabians,  217. 

Sachau,    Eduard,    234. 

Sacred  books  of  Jews  and  Chris- 
tians,   66. 

Sa'dite  darwishes,  49. 

Sahara,  254. 

Saints,  Muslim,  23  ff.,  347  f. ; 
Christians  and  Muslim  saints, 
28;  have  vision  of  Allah,  198; 
the  friends  of  Allah,  205; 
quasi-life  in  their  tombs,  207; 
tombs  of,  in  Cairo,  208;  in- 
spiration of,  188,  218;  states- 
men-saints, 284;  worship  of, 
perverted,  332;  as  mission- 
aries,   270. 

Saint   Louis,    35. 

Saint    Patrick's    Day,    95. 

Sa'ir  (mountain  near  Nazareth), 
236. 

Saladin,  as  an  amateur  theolog- 
ian, 280. 

Sale's  translation  of  the  Qur'an, 
88. 

Samuel,    183. 

San'a,    305. 

Sand-divination,    343. 

S.    Sophia,    291. 

Saul,  among  the  prophets,  90 
f.,    183. 

Sayyidnd  Husen,  "Our  Lord 
Husen,"    95. 

Scholastic  theology  of  Islam, 
119  fF.,  197;  effect  of,  in 
Islam,    194;  in  education,  301, 

305- 

Schreiner,  Martin,  210. 

Scriptures,  Jewish  and  Christian, 
in  Islam,  210  ff.,  223;  were 
they  corrupted?  223;  Muslim 
historians  and  Scriptures,  237; 
present  day  Muslim  attitude 
to,   241. 

Seal    of    Solomon,    342. 

Seir,  235. 

Semites,   a  moralizing   race,    102. 


Semitic    prophetism,    67. 
Senusite    darwishes,    253;    chiefs 

of,  254. 
Seven    Sleepers,    342. 
Shajarat    ad-Durr,    35. 
-Sha'rani,   27^',   tomb  of,  28. 
Shaykh  al-Bekri,  155,  160,  180  f. 
Shaykh   of    darwishes,    160,    171. 
Shi'ite,   91    f.,  95,  98. 
Sicily,  252. 
Sina'a,    305. 
Sinai,  235   f. 

Snouck  Hurgronje,   Mekka,   334. 
Society    for    Psychical    Research, 

68. 
Song  of  Solomon,  239. 
Soothsayers    in    Arabia,    64,    67; 

form    of   utterance    of,    81. 
South  Arabia,  54. 
Spain,    230,    252,    268,    276,    282, 

286,    315-317. 
Speech  a  quality  of  Allah,   106  f. 
Spirit   from  Allah,   the,   247. 
"Spirit,  the,  is  the  affair  of  thy 

Lord,"    195. 
Stamboul,    282. 

Statesmen-saints    in    Islam,    284. 
States,     psychological,     in     man, 

198. 
Stories,   349. 
Story-tellers,  religious,  in  Islam, 

226. 
Sudanese  Muslims,  262. 
Sufiism,   42,    14s   ff. 
Sultan    (use   as   title),    276. 
Sunnite,   95   f. 
Superstitions,     334. 
Sword,   the,   in    Islam,    260. 
Sympathy,    necessity    of,    2,     18, 

21-23,    30,    72. 
Syria,    343.    358. 
Syrian  Desert,  247. 


Tables   of    the    law,    225. 
Taghiya   (use  as  title),  276. 


374 


INDEX 


Talismans,    341. 
Taxes    of   non-Muslims,   265. 
Teachers  in  primary  schools,  294. 
Teaching    corporations  in    Islam, 

302. 
Technical   education,    304. 
Telepathic     gifts     of     darwishes, 

170. 
Telepathy,     335,     347. 
Tell    el-Kebir,   252. 
Templars,    279, 
Tertiaries,    158  f. 
Text-books,     highly     abbreviated, 

311- 

Text-book  for  darwish  frater- 
nities,   182. 

Theological  education  in  Islam, 
300,    317;    schools,    308. 

Theology  of  individual  experi- 
ence,   198. 

"Theology   of   Aristotle,"    143. 

"There  is  no  God  at  all  save 
Allah!"   70. 

Thought-transference,    335. 

"Thus  saith  the  Lord,"  in  the 
Qur'an,   81. 

Tomb  of  a  saint,  inscription  on, 
25;  at  Tiberias,  29;  visiting 
their    tombs,    24. 

Tombs  of  Aramean  and  Nabatean 
trading    colonies,    63. 

Torah,    225. 

Trade-guilds,   307    f. 

Tradition    in    Islam,    54,     146. 

Traditionalists,    in    Islam,    227. 

Traditions,   116,  301;   forged,   52. 

Training   of  the   young,    292. 

Trance-mediums,  tendency  to 
cheat,  74;  parallels  of  Muham- 
mad with,   55. 

Tree-worship,   329. 
Tribes  come  to   Muhammad,  261. 
Tribute   of    non-Muslims,    265. 
Trinity,    the,     136;    doctrine    of, 

sexualized,    247. 
Tunis,    279,    316   f. 


Turkey,    153,    2Tt,    332;    reform 

in,  361. 
Turkish    period    in    architecture, 

307. 
Turks,    153,    262. 
"Twist  their  tongues  in  it,"  221. 

U 

'Ulama    of    Egypt,    254. 
*Umar  ibn  al-Farid,  tomb  of,  2T, 
Uncreated   Word,   the,  99. 
Unity  of  Allah,   the,  135-142;  in 

his    acts,     136;    internal,    136, 

141;     external,      140;     in     his 

essence,    140. 
Universities,  Muslim,  289  f.,  308. 
University    education    in    Islam, 

295.    300. 
Unprovoked  war,  is  it  allowable? 

264. 
"Upon    thee    be    peace    and    the 

mercy   and   blessing   of    God!" 

69. 
Usama    ibn    Munqidh,    279. 
Utilitarianism  of  Islam,  309,  315. 


Vatican,  the,  268. 

Veil,  the,  in  Islam,   104;  veil  on 

the    heart,    201. 
Vernacular,     education     in     the, 

320. 
Vincent  of  Lerins,   113. 
Visage  of  Allah,   75. 
Vision    of    God,    199. 
VoUers,  Karl,  40  f. 
Voodoo,   332   f. 

W 

Wahhabites,    47,    285. 
Waqf,   299. 

Western  North  Africa,  315,  317. 
Wellhausen   on    Samuel,    183. 
"Which      proceedeth      from     the 
Father,"   69. 


INDEX 


375 


"Whoever  is  upon  the  earth  is 
fleeting,"    187. 

Will  of  Allah,  108,  142,  144,  188, 

Wisdom  literature  in  Islam,  226. 

"Without  enquiring  how  and 
without  comparison,"    133. 

Wives  of  Muhammad,   105. 

Women,  supposed  Muslim  atti- 
tude towards,  17;  in  Islam, 
104;  scholars  in  Islam,  294; 
world  of  women  and  children, 

325- 
Word,     divine,     of    Allah,     109, 

III,  242,  246   f. 
Word  of  God,  99,   106;  doctrine 

of    the,    105. 
World,      the,     fleeting,      75;      of 

bodies     and      accidents,      126; 

originated,     127;     a     perpetual 

miracle,   137. 


Writing,    300. 


Yahya  ibn  Mu'in,  227  f. 
Young   men   and  darwish    frater- 
nities,  167. 
Young  Turk  Committee,  255,  277. 


Zahirite  school,  238. 

Zakat,  71. 

Zar,  4,  332   f. 

Zikrs  of  darwishes,  160,  166, 
167,  331  f.,  334  f;  public,  166; 
religious  and  moral  effects  of, 
168;  are  Christian  Zikrs  pos- 
sible? 169;  bad  effects  of,  172; 
Zikr  (dhikr)  means  "remem- 
bering,"'   189. 

Zoroastrians,  217. 


^161.M132 
Aspects  of  Islam 

Princeton  Theological  Seminary-Speer  Library 


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